Search multiple strings from multiple files

Question

How to search multiple strings from multiple files with a single command. May be using grep or find or if there is any other in Linux or Solaris

Answer 1

find $BASEDIR -type f -exec egrep 'string1|string2|string3' $file /dev/null \;

where $BASEDIR is the root of the search operation. You can also get clever with egrep -R, but I prefer find as I can be more selective about the files by adding -name foo\* , -mtime -100 , or similar qualifiers.

Answer 2

MadHatter's solution will certainly work, however, a simpler, imho, command would be to use (e)grep's recursive flag. Such as:

egrep -r 'regex1|regex2' /foo/bar/*

Depending on whether it is more convenient to consider the collection of files in a hierarchy, above, or as a finite set using shell glob'ing as:

egrep 'regex1|regex2' /foo/bar/{file1,file2}