在Linux中查找某个文件并打印其创建和修改时间

Question

I want to find some file(s) in a Linux directory based on a certain text that it/they have. Once I figured out the file(s) I want to print the creation and modification time.

For example, I have a directory X that has four files, namely: x1.txt, x2.txt, x3.text, and x4.txt with the following info.

x1.txt

Name: Mark
Age: 22
Country: USA

x2.txt

Name: Jiff
Age: 26
Country: USA

x3.txt

Name: Sarah
Age: 30
Country: Canada

x4.txt

Name: Heather
Age: 23
Country: USA

What I want is print the creation and modification time of the file(s) that contain(s) "Country: Canada" text

What i have done is I just figured out the files in this format

# echo $(grep -rn 'Country: Canada' *)

And I got

x3.txt:3:Country: Canada

I need to firstly extract the file name(s), then use the name(s) as input for a time command to get the creation and modification time.

Answer 1

Use the -l option for grep to only list the file names:

grep -lrn 'Country: Canada' *

To print the create/mod time of a file, use stat :

stat <file>

You can format the output how you like:

stat --printf "Created: %w\nModified: %y\n"

Putting it all together, you can send the output list of the grep to the input list of stat via the xargs command:

grep -lrn 'Country: Canada' * | xargs stat --printf "Created: %w\nModified: %y\n"