I am using the following command on a Unix server:
find . -type f -name "*.txt" | xargs grep -li 'needle'
Since grep -R is not available, I have to use this find/xargs solution. Every time a file cannot be opened, grep tells me this:
grep: can't open "foo.txt"
I want to get rid of this message, so I tried to redirect stderr to /dev/null, but somehow this is not working.
find . -type f -name "*.txt" | xargs grep -li 'needle' 2>/dev/null
I want to preserve stdout (i.e. write the results to the console), and only hide these grep error messages. Instead of 2>, I also tried &>, but this also did not work. How can I fix this?
2 Answers
In order to redirect stderr to /dev/null use:
some_cmd 2>/dev/null
You don't need xargs here. (And you don't want it! since it performs word splitting)
Use find's exec option:
find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec grep -li needle {} +
To suppress the error messages use the -s option of grep:
From man grep:
-s, --no-messages Suppress error messages about nonexistent or unreadable files.
which gives you:
find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec grep -lis needle {} +
Just move the redirection to the first command, i.e.
find ... 2>/dev/null | xargs ...
Or you can enclose everything in parenthesis:
(find ... | xargs ...) 2>/dev/null
