finding lost data declarations

[wejofost]

  I have over 230 files plus 39 directories ( 3.5Mb ) in my public_html directory and I am looking for where I specified/declared the contents of a variable!  I can't for the life of me remember in which web page/directory I set up the contents of that run time variable.  ( It was three years ago! )

Can anyone advise me how find that data variable  ( Its called $depositrules )?

[PFMaBiSmAd]

Most programming editors (Notepad++ for example) have a way of searching through all the files and folders within a starting folder.

[wejofost]

Thank you for your reply.  I fully understand that Text Editors can search a slected file for matching data but I have not yet come across a Text Editor that can open directories and search multiple files.

 

The old Windows 2000 professional can search a whole series of directories for data strings within a whole series of files but I can't do that in Vista and Windows 7?

 

 

[roopurt18]

Since you're using Windows, go get yourself UnixTools from sourceforge and use find and grep:

 

If myVar is the variable you're looking for:

find . -type f -name "*.php" -exec grep -il myvar {} \;

 

That will list every file that contains: myvar (case insensitive).

 

If you want to find assignments to myvar, this might get you there:

find . -type f -name "*.php" -exec grep -ilE 'myvar[ ]*=' {} \;

 

Best of luck.

[wejofost]

Thank you roopurt18.  I last used UNIX 10 years ago! but I do remember that find with grep is a cunning bit of software.  I have access to a HPUX system so I'll use that.

Best regards.

Wej Parry