[linux] How to suppress binary file matching results in grep

When using grep in linux, the result often contains a lot of "binary file XXX matches", which I do not care about. How to suppress this part of the results, or how to exclude binary files in grep?

This question is related to linux grep

The answer is


There are three options, that you can use. -I is to exclude binary files in grep. Other are for line numbers and file names.

grep -I -n -H 


-I -- process a binary file as if it did not contain matching data; 
-n -- prefix each line of output with the 1-based line number within its input file
-H -- print the file name for each match

So this might be a way to run grep:

grep -InH your-word *

This is an old question and its been answered but I thought I'd put the --binary-files=text option here for anyone who wants to use it. The -I option ignores the binary file but if you want the grep to treat the binary file as a text file use --binary-files=text like so:

bash$ grep -i reset mediaLog*
Binary file mediaLog_dc1.txt matches
bash$ grep --binary-files=text -i reset mediaLog*
mediaLog_dc1.txt:2016-06-29 15:46:02,470 - Media [uploadChunk  ,315] - ERROR - ('Connection aborted.', error(104, 'Connection reset by peer'))
mediaLog_dc1.txt:ConnectionError: ('Connection aborted.', error(104, 'Connection reset by peer'))
bash$