Searching across all do files in a folder

[Scott Rick]

Hi. I would like to search through all my do files for the word "lasso". Is there any command that can do this? Thanks!

[Clyde Schechter]

Assuming all your do-files are in a single folder (or subfolders of that folder):

//  FIRST MAKE SURE YOUR CURRENT WORKING DIRECTORY IS THE ONE CONTAINING THE FILES TO BE SEARCHED

//  CREATE A DATA SET OF THE PATHNAMES
filelist, pattern(*.do)

//  READ IN THE FILES
gen strL contents = fileread(dirname+"/"+filename)

//  IDENTIFY THE ONES CONTAINING THE TARGET STRING
gen long foundit = strpos(contents, "lasso")

//  SHOW THE RESULTS
list if foundit

-filelist- is written by Robert Picard and is available from SSC.

Added: If you don't want to include files in the subdirectories, add the -norecursive- option to the -filelist- command.

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

I would use -grep- for this. It’s a command line utility from Linux but available with Mac and Windows (for windows, you’ll need something like Cygwin) I believe.