grep -r pattern ./ without recursion?

Question

I want to run the grep -r pattern ./ but WITHOUT recursively going through the sub directories. When I removed the -r flag, I didn't get any output in my terminal. What flag am I supposed to use to grep for patterns in files in my current directory only?

Answer 1

$ grep
Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...

so

grep fred *

will look for fred in the files in the current directory.

By using -r you are explicitly requesting recursion.

Answer 2

grep pattern *

also try: grep -l patter * to see which files matched

if you didn't get any output, that means no matches were found.