C.9 Searching and Sorting

You can use the following tools to search and sort files.

egrep

Extended version of grep .

fgrep

Searches files for literal words.

find

Searches the system for filenames.

grep

Searches files for text patterns.

locate

Faster version of find ; however, it depends on a database that is periodically updated by the weekly cron job in /etc/weekly . If the database is out of date, find is more accurate.

sort

Sorts a file (use - n for numeric sorting, -u to eliminate duplicates).

strings

Searches binary files for text patterns.

uniq

Reports or filters duplicate lines in a file.

zgrep

Searches compressed files for text patterns.