 grep -5 "foo" *.txt will search for lines containing "foo" in *.txt files in your directory ... and also provide the 5 lines before and after each match for context! The number can be any number between 1 and 9. If you need more than 9 lines you can do: grep -C 20 "foo" *.txt There are also -A and -B options that let you specify after-lines and before-lines. 5 comments | Expand all CWs
 @darius i use this to search codebases for methods called near another method when i can remember some details about one call but not the other  @darius i've used -A and -B for years but i didn't know about -C or -5. nice free win there, sweet.  @darius For more complexity, I usually combine find and xargs with grep: find . -iname "*.txt" -print0 | xargs -0 grep -5 "foo" with params, you can use "find" to include/exclude files/directories (e.g. ignore ".git", or softlinks) recursively. "-print0 | xargs 0" turns all filenames into NULL terminated strings parameters, letting you search filenames with embedded spaces. Yeah, with power comes complexity. 🙂  @darius the --color option is extra nice with context too. If you want both color and less(1), you have to do this goop: grep --color=always ... | less -R |
Gregory's Server
@darius I knew about after/before/context, but wasn't aware you could just use a number...