locate the line

i have been asked to answer this same question for the hundredth time.

"how to locate or find specific line or a word in a file or a directory structure using linux shell commands?"

easy.. :)

to find within a file..

grep "your stuff here" filename

to find in directory structure, recursively..

cd /your/target/directory; find . -type f | xargs grep -l "search me"

-l to grep, lists only the file names containing the match

happy search!