Use grep to find content in files and move them if they match
This is what I use in Fedora Core 12:
grep -l 'Subject: \[SPAM\]' | xargs -I '{}' mv '{}' DIR
If you want to find and move files that do not match your pattern (move files that don't contain 'Subject \[SPAM\]'
in this example) use:
grep -L -Z -r 'Subject: \[SPAM\]' . | xargs -0 -I{} mv {} DIR
The -Z means output with zeros (\0) after the filenames (so spaces are not used as delimeters).
xargs -0
means interpret \0 to be delimiters.
The -L means find files that do not match the pattern. Replace -L
with -l
if you want to move files that match your pattern.
Then
-I{} mv {} DIR
means replace {}
with the filenames, so you get mv filenames DIR
.
This is what helped me:
grep -lir 'spam' ./ | xargs mv -t ../spam
Of course, I was already in required folder (that's why ./
) and moved them to neighboring folder. But you can change them to any paths.
I don't know why accepted answer didn't work. Also I didn't have spaces and special characters in filenames - maybe this will not work.
Stolen here: Grep command to find files containing text string and move them
This alternative works where xargs is not availabe:
grep -L -r 'Subject: \[SPAM\]' . | while read f; do mv "$f" out; done