If I understand the problem, you want to find all files beneath a directory which contain a certain string, except ignoring the string when it falls in a comment block. Here's a solution that uses perl: 

find . -type f -print0 | while read -d $'\0' f; do if perl -0777pe 's|
+/\*.*?\*/||gs' $f | grep certain_string >/dev/null; then echo $f; fi 
+; done

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Aaron B.
Available for small or large Perl jobs and *nix system administration; see my home node.

In reply to Re^3: How do i search and extract commented lines from a file using perl? by aaron_baugher
in thread How do i search and extract commented lines from a file using perl? by sravan937

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