Using grep to search for a string

Question

I wanted to search for this particular string $string['site:config'] in my folder. But when I use a normal grep function grep -r "$string['site:config']" it gives me random results.

Answer 1

The problem with your pattern is that characters like $ [ ] are characters used to define regular expressions and you have either to escape them:

grep "\$string\['site:config'\]"

or instruct grep to look for the given string as is:

grep -F "$string['site:config']"

without attempting to interpret it as a regular expression.