Linux command: How to ‘find’ only text files?

by

I know this is an old thread, but I stumbled across it and thought I’d share my method which I have found to be a very fast way to use find to find only non-binary files:

find . -type f -exec grep -Iq . {} \; -print

The -I option to grep tells it to immediately ignore binary files and the . option along with the -q will make it immediately match text files so it goes very fast. You can change the -print to a -print0 for piping into an xargs -0 or something if you are concerned about spaces (thanks for the tip, @lucas.werkmeister!)

Also the first dot is only necessary for certain BSD versions of find such as on OS X, but it doesn’t hurt anything just having it there all the time if you want to put this in an alias or something.

EDIT: As @ruslan correctly pointed out, the -and can be omitted since it is implied.

More Related Contents:

  1. How do I find all files containing specific text on Linux?
  2. How to exclude a directory in find . command
  3. How can I search for a multiline pattern in a file?
  4. How do I exclude a directory when using `find`?
  5. Find and copy files
  6. ‘find -exec’ a shell function in Linux
  7. “find: paths must precede expression:” How do I specify a recursive search that also finds files in the current directory?
  8. Why are the backslash and semicolon required with the find command’s -exec option?
  9. Find the files that have been changed in last 24 hours
  10. Find files and tar them (with spaces)
  11. How to find all files containing specific text (string) on Linux?
  12. How to only get file name with Linux ‘find’?
  13. Rename files and directories recursively under ubuntu /bash
  14. grep without showing path/file:line
  15. Linux removing folders older than 1 year and more than 3 files
  16. How can I find all files containing specific text (string) on Linux?
  17. Is there a way for non-root processes to bind to “privileged” ports on Linux?
  18. How to make an executable ELF file in Linux using a hex editor?
  19. Separately redirecting and recombining stderr/stdout without losing ordering
  20. Print a file, skipping the first X lines, in Bash [duplicate]
  21. why is the output of `du` often so different from `du -b`
  22. Running a cron job on Linux every six hours
  23. Shebang line limit in bash and linux kernel
  24. Error on execution -version `Qt_5′ not found required by
  25. What is the status of POSIX asynchronous I/O (AIO)?
  26. Simple Socket Server in Bash?
  27. Understanding the Linux oom-killer’s logs
  28. find a pattern in files and rename them [closed]
  29. Using software floating point on x86 linux
  30. Negate if condition in bash script

Leave a Comment