Pretty convoluted, no? I would likely use -exec: $ mkdir dir.py $ echo blah >> blah.py $ find . -type f -name "*.py" -exec grep -i BLAH {} \; blah

Pretty convoluted, no? I would likely use -exec: $ mkdir dir.py $ echo blah >> blah.py $ find . -type f -name "*.py" -exec grep -i BLAH {} \; blah $ Edit: Ah, right, he's filtering on filenames. That's what -iname is for. The man file is quite good.