Using Find Command with a RegEx for the Search String

Question

I wrote a command that successfully returns all PDF files that contain the keyword "Font":

find /my/path/PDFFiles/  -type f -name "*.pdf" -exec grep -H "Font" '{}' ';'

There are some limitations with this command that I'd like to overcome.

Questions

How would I use a RegEx for my search string where I am currently doing just "Font"
How can I adjust the command above to return all filenames where the keyword "Font" does not exist?

Thanks

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:25:14Z

2

1) grep supports regular expressions out of the box. So just get rid of the "". For example, if you want "dont" or "font"

find /my/path/PDFFiles/  -type f -name "*.pdf" -exec grep -H "[df]ont" '{}' ';'

2) grep also allows you to exclude entries with a -v command. So to exclude 'Font' try:

find /my/path/PDFFiles/  -type f -name "*.pdf" -exec grep -vH "Font" '{}' ';'

You can also use finds prune option as detailed in this question

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:25

CommunityBot

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answered May 15, 2013 at 15:08

Ewan

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2 Comments

kampu Over a year ago

[df]ont, unquoted, will fail under zsh with the error zsh: no matches found: [df]ont (never executing the command). Quoted is always safer (but especially it wards off danger in the case that either ? or * are present in your expression, vulnerable to interpretation by the shell.)

Ewan Over a year ago

Thank you @kampu! I've updated my answer accordingly. I've actually just switched to zsh but foolishly only checked it ran in bash! I'll know for next time. Good point on the "quoted is always safer".

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