How to return both file name and line number with find … -exec grep?

When using find, how do I return the file name and the line number when searching for a string? I manage to return the file name in one command and the line numbers with another one, but I can’t seem to combine them.

File names: find . -type f -exec grep -l 'string to search' {} ;

Line numbers: find . -type f -exec grep -n 'string to search' {} ;

Answers:

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Method 1

The command line switch -H forces grep to print the file name, even with just one file.

% grep -n 7 test.in
7:7
% grep -Hn 7 test.in
test.in:7:7

   -H, --with-filename
          Print the filename for each match.

Note that as Kojiro says in a comment, this is not part of the POSIX standard; it is in both GNU and BSD grep, but it’s possible some systems don’t have it (e.g. Solaris).

Method 2

find . -type f -exec grep -n 'string to search' /dev/null {} +

(or with GNU grep, see the -H option)

Method 3

If your grep supports the recursive -r flag, this solves your request:

grep -rn "String to search " *

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0