How to report filenames found by strings after being piped through grep?

Question

I've been around *nix long enough to remember having done this in the past, and now those neural pathways are gone... I'm searching /usr/local/lib for files that contain img_convert because I'm getting a link error and want to find the library to include which contains that reference.

This command finds the reference, but doesn't print the containing file names:

$ strings /usr/local/lib/* | grep 'img_convert'
img_convert
img_convert

Of course, I could script this, however I'm sure there's a way to do this from the command line... so any help is appreciated!

Sven · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-05T17:55:13.920

3

Try

strings --print-file-name /usr/local/lib/* | grep 'img_convert'

Note that this will work with GNU strings, but not necessarily with other versions.

edited May 05 '14 at 17:55

answered May 05 '14 at 16:55

Sven

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THANKS! On my particular flavor it was "--print-file-name". – Alan May 05 '14 at 17:51

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 05 '14 at 17:24

3

Grep is happy to read binary files and search for the string itself so

grep -l img_convert /usr/local/lib/*

should do what you want.

answered May 05 '14 at 17:24

user9517

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WAT? grep speaks binary? thanks for the tip. – Alan May 05 '14 at 17:52

How to report filenames found by strings after being piped through grep?

2 Answers2