How to find text files not containing text on Linux?
You can do it with grep alone (without find).
grep -riL "somestring" .
This is the explanation of the parameters used on grep
-L, --files-without-match
each file processed.
-R, -r, --recursive
Recursively search subdirectories listed.
-i, --ignore-case
Perform case insensitive matching.
If you use l
lowercase you will get the opposite (files with matches)
-l, --files-with-matches
Only the names of files containing selected lines are written
The command you quote, ironically enough does exactly what you describe. Test it!
echo "hello" > a
echo "bye" > b
grep -iL BYE a b
Says a only.
I think you may be confusing -L and -l
find . -print | xargs grep -iL "somestring"
is the inverse of
find . -print | xargs grep -il "somestring"
By the way, consider
find . -print0 | xargs -0 grep -iL "somestring"
Or even
grep -IRiL "somestring" .