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Development Tools Console Foundations Environment and Redirection Find and Grep

I'm not clear why/when we use Find & Grep

Referencing video: https://teamtreehouse.com/library/console-foundations/environment-and-redirection/find-and-grep

Watched this and have no clue why/when we'd use Find and Grep. They both require you to have some idea of what you're looking for...and all I can gather both of these do is simply find a file or in grep's case "patterns in a file"? So what? Why was a whole video devoted to something that seems quite useless...it mustn't be, but I'm not seeing the usefulness.

2 Answers

Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points

Use find to find files.

Use grep to find the content inside of files.

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,644 Points

I've used both of these tools for many years on almost a daily basis.

I find them both extremely useful — but their usefulness may be a factor of the kind of work you are doing.

But I think their utility is generic enough that they certainly deserve the specific focus you found in the video. Even if they don't apply to the work you do now, they quite likely may at some point in the future.