Chapter 3. The grep Family
 | CONTENTS |  |
- 3.1 The grep Command
- 3.2 grep Examples with Regular Expressions
- 3.3 grep with Pipes
- 3.4 grep with Options
- 3.5 egrep (Extended grep)
- 3.6 Fixed grep or Fast grep
- UNIX TOOLS LAB EXERCISE
The grep family consists of the commands grep, egrep, and fgrep. The grep command globally searches for regular expressions in files and prints all lines that contain the expression. The egrep and fgrep commands are simply variants of grep. The egrep command is an extended grep, supporting more regular expression metacharacters. The fgrep command, called fixed grep, and sometimes fast grep, treats all characters as literals; that is, regular expression metacharacters aren't special they match themselves. The Free Software Foundation provides a free version of grep, called GNU grep. These versions of grep are the ones used on Linux systems, and can be found in /usr/xpg4/bin on Sun's Solaris OS. The GNU version of grep has extended the basic regular expression metacharacter set, added POSIX compliancy, and included a number of new command line options. They also provide a recursive grep called rgrep for descending entire directory trees.
3.1 The grep Command
3.1.1 The Meaning of grep
The name grep can be traced back to the ex editor. If you invoked that editor and wanted to search for a string, you would type at the ex prompt:
: /pattern/p
The first line containing the string pattern would be printed as "p" by the print command. If you wanted all the lines that contained pattern to be printed, you would type:
: g/pattern/p
When g precedes pattern, it means "all lines in the file," or "perform a global substitution."
Because the search pattern is called a regular expression, we can substitute RE for pattern and the command reads:
: g/RE/p
And there you have it: the meaning of grep and the origin of its name. It means "globally search for the regular expression (RE) and print out the line." The nice part of using grep is that you do --not have to invoke an editor to perform a search, and you do not need to enclose the regular expression in forward slashes. It is much faster than using ex or vi.
3.1.2 How grep Works
The grep command searches for a pattern of characters in a file or multiple files. If the pattern contains whitespace, it must be quoted. The pattern is either a quoted string or a single word[1], and all other words following it are treated as filenames. Grep sends its output to the screen and does not change or affect the input file in any way.
FORMATgrep word filename filename |
Example 3.1
grep Tom /etc/passwd
EXPLANATIONGrep will search for the pattern Tom in a file called /etc/passwd. If successful, the line from the file will appear on the screen; if the pattern is not found, there will be no output at all; and if the file is not a legitimate file, an error will be sent to the screen. If the pattern is found, grep returns an exit status of 0, indicating success; if the pattern is not found, the exit status returned is 1; and if the file is not found, the exit status is 2. The grep program can get its input from a standard input or a pipe, as well as from files. If you forget to name a file, grep will assume it is getting input from standard input, the keyboard, and will stop until you type something. If coming from a pipe, the output of a command will be piped as input to the grep command, and if a desired pattern is matched, grep will print the output to the screen. |
Example 3.2
% ps -ef | grep root
EXPLANATIONThe output of the ps command (ps ef displays all processes running on this system) is sent to grep and all lines containing root are printed. |
The grep command supports a number of regular expression metacharacters (see Table 3.1) to help further define the search pattern. It also provides a number of options (see Table 3.2) to modify the way it does its search or displays lines. For example, you can provide options to turn off case sensitivity, display line numbers, display errors only, and so on.
Example 3.3
% grep -n '^jack:' /etc/passwd
EXPLANATIONGrep searches the /etc/passwd file for jack; if jack is at the beginning of a line, grep prints out the number of the line on which jack was found and where in the line jack was found. |
| Metacharacter | Function | Example | What It Matches |
|---|---|---|---|
| ^ | Beginning-of-line anchor | '^love' | Matches all lines beginning with love. |
| $ | End-of-line anchor | 'love$' | Matches all lines ending with love. |
| . | Matches one character | 'l..e' | Matches lines containing an l, followed by two characters, followed by an e. |
| * | Matches zero or more characters | ' *love' | Matches lines with zero or more spaces, followed by the pattern love. |
| [ ] | Matches one character in the set | '[Ll]ove' | Matches lines containing love or Love. |
| [^] | Matches one character not in the set | '[^A K]ove' | Matches lines not containing a character in the range A through K, followed by ove. |
| \< | Beginning-of-word anchor | '\<love' | Matches lines containing a word that begins with love. |
| \> | End-of-word anchor | 'love\>' | Matches lines containing a word that ends with love. |
| \(..\) | Tags matched characters | '\(love\)ing' | Tags marked portion in a register to be remembered later as number 1. To reference later, use \1 to repeat the pattern. May use up to nine tags, starting with the first tag at the left-most part of the pattern. For example, the pattern love is saved in register 1 to be referenced later as \1. |
| x\{m\} x\{m,\} x\{m,n\}[a] | Repetition of character x: m times, at least m times, or between m and n times | 'o\{5\}' 'o\{5,\}' 'o\{5,10\}' | Matches if line has 5 occurences of o, at least 5 occurences of o, or between 5 and 10 occurrences of o. |
[a] The \{ \} metacharacters are not supported on all versions of UNIX or all pattern-matching utilities; they usually work with vi and grep.
| Option | What It Does |
|---|---|
| b | Precedes each line by the block number on which it was found. This is sometimes useful in locating disk block numbers by context. |
| c | Displays a count of matching lines rather than displaying the lines that match. |
| h | Does not display filenames. |
| i | Ignores the case of letters in making comparisons (i.e., upper-- and lowercase are considered identical). |
| l | Lists only the names of files with matching lines (once), separated by newline characters. |
| n | Precedes each line by its relative line number in the file. |
| s | Works silently, that is, displays nothing except error messages. This is useful for checking the exit status. |
| v | Inverts the search to display only lines that do not match. |
| w | Searches for the expression as a word, as if surrounded by \< and \>. This applies to grep only. (Not all versions of grep support this feature; e.g., SCO UNIX does not.) |
3.1.3 grep and Exit Status
The grep command is very useful in shell scripts, because it always returns an exit status to indicate whether it was able to locate the pattern or the file you were looking for. If the pattern is found, grep returns an exit status of 0, indicating success; if grep cannot find the pattern, it returns 1 as its exit status; and if the file cannot be found, grep returns an exit status of 2. (Other UNIX utilities that search for patterns, such as sed and awk, do not use the exit status to indicate the success or failure of locating a pattern; they report failure only if there is a syntax error in a command.)
In the following example, john is not found in the /etc/passwd file.
Example 3.4
1 % grep 'john' /etc/passwd 2 % echo $status (csh) 1 or $ echo $? (sh, ksh) 1
EXPLANATION
|
3.2 grep Examples with Regular Expressions
The file being used for these examples is called datafile.
% cat datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
Example 3.5
grep NW datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing the regular expression NW in a file called datafile. |
Example 3.6
grep NW d* datafile: northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 db:northwest NW Joel Craig 30 40 5 123
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing the regular expression NW in all files starting with a d. The shell expands d* to all files that begin with a d, in this case the filenames are db and datafile. |
Example 3.7
grep '^n' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines beginning with an n. The caret (^) is the beginning-of-line anchor. |
Example 3.8
grep '4$' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines ending with a 4. The dollar sign ($) is the end of line anchor. |
Example 3.9
grep TB Savage datafile grep: Savage: No such file or directory datafile:eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20
EXPLANATIONSince the first argument is the pattern and all of the remaining arguments are filenames, grep will search for TB in a file called Savage and a file called datafile. To search for TB Savage, see the next example. |
Example 3.10
grep 'TB Savage' datafile eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing the pattern TB Savage. Without quotes (in this example, either single or double quotes will do), the whitespace between TB and Savage would cause grep to search for TB in a file called Savage and a file called datafile, as in the previous example. |
% cat datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 53 .97 5 23 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
Example 3.11
grep '5\..' datafile western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
EXPLANATIONPrints a line containing the number 5, followed by a literal period and any single character. The "dot" metacharacter represents a single character, unless it is escaped with a backslash. When escaped, the character is no longer a special metacharacter, but represents itself, a literal period. |
Example 3.12
grep '\.5' datafile north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9
EXPLANATIONPrints any line containing the expression .5. |
Example 3.13
grep '^[we]' datafile western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20
EXPLANATIONPrints lines beginning with either a w or an e. The caret (^) is the beginning-of-line anchor, and either one of the characters in the brackets will be matched. |
Example 3.14
grep '[^0-9]' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing one non-digit. Because all lines have at least one non-digit, all lines are printed. (See the v option.) |
Example 3.15
grep '[A-Z][A-Z] [A-Z]' datafile eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing two capital letters followed by a space and a capital letter, e.g., TB Savage and AM Main. |
Example 3.16
grep 'ss* ' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing an s followed by zero or more consecutive occurrences of the letter s and a space. Finds Charles and Dalsass. |
% cat datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 53 .97 5 23 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
Example 3.17
grep '[a-z]\{9\}' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines where there are at least nine consecutive lowercase letters, for example, northwest, southwest, southeast, and northeast. |
Example 3.18
grep '\(3\)\.[0-9].*\1 *\1' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34
EXPLANATIONPrints the line if it contains a 3 followed by a period and another number, followed by any number of characters (.* ), another 3 (originally tagged), any number of tabs, and another 3. Since the 3 was enclosed in parentheses, \(3\), it can be later referenced with \1. \1 means that this was the first expression to be tagged with the \( \) pair. |
Example 3.19
grep '\<north' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing a word starting with north. The \< is the beginning-of-word anchor. |
Example 3.20
grep '\<north\>' datafile north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9
EXPLANATIONPrints the line if it contains the word north. The \< is the beginning-of-word anchor, and the \> is the end-of-word anchor. |
Example 3.21
grep '\<[a-z].*n\>' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing a word starting with a lowercase letter, followed by any number of characters, and a word ending in n. Watch the .* symbol. It means any character, including whitespace. |
3.3 grep with Pipes
Instead of taking its input from a file, grep often gets its input from a pipe.
Example 3.22
% ls -l drwxrwxrwx 2 ellie 2441 Jan 6 12:34 dir1 -rw-r--r-- 1 ellie 1538 Jan 2 15:50 file1 -rw-r--r-- 1 ellie 1539 Jan 3 13:36 file2 drwxrwxrwx 2 ellie 2341 Jan 6 12:34 grades % ls -l | grep '^d' drwxrwxrwx 2 ellie 2441 Jan 6 12:34 dir1 drwxrwxrwx 2 ellie 2341 Jan 6 12:34 grades
EXPLANATIONThe output of the ls command is piped to grep. All lines of output that begin with a d are printed; that is, all directories are printed. |
3.4 grep with Options
The grep command has a number of options that control its behavior. Not all versions of UNIX support exactly the same options, so be sure to check your man pages for a complete list.
% cat datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 53 .97 5 23 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
Example 3.23
grep n '^south' datafile 3:southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 4:southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 5:southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17
EXPLANATIONThe n option precedes each line with the number of the line where the pattern was found, followed by the line. |
Example 3.24
grep i 'pat' datafile southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17
EXPLANATIONThe i option turns off case sensitivity. It does not matter if the expression pat contains any combination of upper- or lowercase letters. |
Example 3.25
grep v 'Suan Chin' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
EXPLANATIONHere, the v option prints all lines not containing the pattern Suan Chin. This option is used when deleting a specific entry from the input file. To really remove the entry, you would redirect the output of grep to a temporary file, and then change the name of the temporary file back to the name of the original file as shown here: grep -v 'Suan Chin' datafile > temp mv temp datafile Remember that you must use a temporary file when redirecting the output from datafile. If you redirect from datafile to datafile, the shell will "clobber" the datafile. (See "Redirection" on page 16.) |
% cat datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 53 .97 5 23 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
Example 3.26
grep l 'SE' * datafile datebook
EXPLANATIONThe l option causes grep to print out only the filenames where the pattern is found instead of the line of text |
Example 3.27
grep c 'west' datafile 3
EXPLANATIONThe c option causes grep to print the number of lines where the pattern was found. This does not mean the number of occurrences of the pattern. For example, if west is found three times on a line, it only counts the line once. |
Example 3.28
grep w 'north' datafile north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9
EXPLANATIONThe w option causes grep to find the pattern only if it is a word,[2] not part of a word. Only the line containing the word north is printed, not northwest, northeast, etc. |
Example 3.29
echo $LOGNAME lewis grep -i "$LOGNAME" datafile southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18
EXPLANATIONThe value of the shell ENV variable, LOGNAME, is printed. It contains the user's login name. If the variable is enclosed in double quotes, it will still be expanded by the shell, and in case there is more than one word assigned to the variable, whitespace is shielded from shell interpretation. If single quotes are used, variable substitution does not take place; that is, $LOGNAME is printed. |
3.4.1 grep Review
Table 3.3 contains examples of grep commands and what they do.
| grep Command | What It Does |
|---|---|
| grep '\<Tom\>' file | Prints lines containing the word Tom. |
| grep 'Tom Savage' file | Prints lines containing Tom Savage. |
| grep '^Tommy' file | Prints lines if Tommy is at the beginning of the line. |
| grep '\.bak$' file | Prints lines ending in .bak. Single quotes protect the dollar sign ($) from interpretation. |
| grep '[Pp]yramid' * | Prints lines from all files containing pyramid or Pyramid in the current working directory. |
| grep '[A Z]' file | Prints lines containing at least one capital letter. |
| grep '[0 9]' file | Prints lines containing at least one number. |
| grep '[A Z] [0 9]' file | Prints lines containing five-character patterns starting with a capital letter and ending with a number. |
| grep w '[tT]est' files | Prints lines with the word Test and/or test. |
| grep s "Mark Todd" file | Finds lines containing Mark Todd, but does not print the line. Can be used when checking grep's exit status. |
| grep v 'Mary' file | Prints all lines not containing Mary. |
| grep i 'sam' file | Prints all lines containing sam, regardless of case (e.g., SAM, sam, SaM, sAm). |
| grep l 'Dear Boss' * | Lists all filenames containing Dear Boss. |
| grep n 'Tom' file | Precedes matching lines with line numbers. |
| grep "$name" file | Expands the value of variable name and prints lines containing that value. Must use double quotes. |
| grep '$5' file | Prints lines containing literal $5. Must use single quotes. |
| ps ef| grep "^ *user1" | Pipes output of ps ef to grep, searching for user1 at the beginning of a line, even if it is preceded by zero or more spaces. |
3.5 egrep (Extended grep)
The main advantage of using egrep is that additional regular expression metacharacters (see Table 3.4) have been added to the set provided by grep. The \(\) and \{\}, however, are not allowed. (See GNU grep E if using Linux.)
| Metacharacter | Function | Example | What It Matches |
|---|---|---|---|
| ^ | Beginning-of-line anchor | '^love' | Matches all lines beginning with love. |
| $ | End-of-line anchor | 'love$' | Matches all lines ending with love. |
| . | Matches one character | 'l..e' | Matches lines containing an l, followed by two characters, followed by an e. |
| * | Matches zero or more characters | '*love' | Matches lines with zero or more spaces of the preceding characters followed by the pattern love. |
| [ ] | Matches one character in the set | '[Ll]ove' | Matches lines containing love or Love. |
| [^ ] | Matches one character not in the set | '[^A KM Z]ove' | Matches lines not containing A through K or M through Z, followed by ove. |
| New with egrep: | |||
| + | Matches one or more of the preceding characters | '[a z]+ove' | Matches one or more lowercase letters, followed by ove. Would find move, approve, love, behoove, etc. |
| ? | Matches zero or one of the preceding characters | 'lo?ve' | Matches for an l followed by either one or not any occurrences of the letter o. Would find love or lve. |
| a|b | Matches either a or b | 'love|hate' | Matches for either expression, love or hate. |
| () | Groups characters | 'love(able|ly) (ov)+' | Matches for lovable or lovely. Matches for one or more occurrences of ov. |
3.5.1 egrep Examples
The following example illustrates only the way the new extended set of regular expression metacharacters is used with egrep. The grep examples presented earlier illustrate the use of the standard metacharacters, which behave the same way with egrep. Egrep also uses the same options at the command line as grep.
% cat datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 53 .97 5 23 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20 northeast NE AM Main Jr. 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
Example 3.30
egrep 'NW|EA' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20
EXPLANATIONPrints the line if it contains either the expression NW or the expression EA. |
Example 3.31
egrep '3+' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 northeast NE AM Main 5.1 .94 3 13 central CT Ann Stephens 5.7 .94 5 13
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing one or more occurrences of the number 3. |
Example 3.32
egrep '2\.?[0 9]' datafile western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 eastern EA TB Savage 4.4 .84 5 20
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing a 2, followed by zero or one period, followed by a number. |
Example 3.33
egrep '(no)+' datafile northwest NW Charles Main 3.0 .98 3 34 northeast NE AM Main 5.1 .94 3 13 north NO Margot Weber 4.5 .89 5 9
EXPLANATIONPrints lines containing one or more consecutive occurrences of the pattern group no. |
Example 3.34
egrep 'S(h|u)' datafile western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing S, followed by either h or u. |
Example 3.35
egrep 'Sh|u' datafile western WE Sharon Gray 5.3 .97 5 23 southern SO Suan Chin 5.1 .95 4 15 southwest SW Lewis Dalsass 2.7 .8 2 18 southeast SE Patricia Hemenway 4.0 .7 4 17
EXPLANATIONPrints all lines containing the expression Sh or u. |
3.5.2 egrep Review
Table 3.5 contains examples of egrep commands and what they do.
| egrep Command | What It Does |
|---|---|
| egrep '^ +' file | Prints lines beginning with one or more spaces. |
| egrep '^ *' file | Prints lines beginning with zero or more spaces[a] |
| egrep '(Tom | Dan) Savage' file | Prints lines containing Tom Savage or Dan Savage. |
| egrep '(ab)+' file | Prints lines with one or more occurrences of ab. |
| egrep '^X[0 9]?' file | Prints lines beginning with X followed by zero or one single digit. |
| egrep 'fun\.$' * | Prints lines ending in fun. from all files.[a] |
| egrep '[A Z]+' file | Prints lines containing one or more capital letters. |
| egrep '[0 9]' file | Prints lines containing a number.[a] |
| egrep '[A Z] [0 9]' file | Prints lines containing five-character patterns starting with a capital letter, followed by three of any character, and ending with a number.[a] |
| egrep '[tT]est' files | Prints lines with Test and/or test.[a] |
| egrep "Susan Jean" file | Prints lines containing Susan Jean.[a] |
| egrep v 'Mary' file | Prints all lines NOT containing Mary.[a] |
| egrep i 'sam' file | Prints all lines containing sam, regardless of case (e.g., SAM, sam, SaM, sAm, etc.).[a] |
| egrep l 'Dear Boss' * | Lists all filenames containing Dear Boss.[a] |
| egrep n 'Tom' file | Precedes matching lines with line numbers.[a] |
| egrep s "$name" file | Expands variable name, finds it, but prints nothing. Can be used to check the exit status of egrep.[a] |
[a] egrep and grep handle this pattern in the same way.
3.6 Fixed grep or Fast grep
The fgrep command behaves like grep, but does not recognize any regular expression metacharacters as being special. All characters represent only themselves. A caret is simply a caret, a dollar sign is a dollar sign, and so forth. (See GNU grep F if using Linux.)
Example 3.36
% fgrep '[A-Z]****[0-9]..$5.00' file
EXPLANATIONFinds all lines in the file containing the literal string [A Z]****[0 9]..$5.00. All characters are treated as themselves. There are no special characters. |
UNIX TOOLS LAB EXERCISE
Lab 1: grep Exercise
Steve Blenheim:238-923-7366:95 Latham Lane, Easton, PA 83755:11/12/56:20300
Betty Boop:245-836-8357:635 Cutesy Lane, Hollywood, CA 91464:6/23/23:14500
Igor Chevsky:385-375-8395:3567 Populus Place, Caldwell, NJ 23875:6/18/68:23400
Norma Corder:397-857-2735:74 Pine Street, Dearborn, MI 23874:3/28/45:245700
Jennifer Cowan:548-834-2348:583 Laurel Ave., Kingsville, TX 83745:10/1/35:58900
Jon DeLoach:408-253-3122:123 Park St., San Jose, CA 04086:7/25/53:85100
Karen Evich:284-758-2857:23 Edgecliff Place, Lincoln, NB 92743:7/25/53:85100
Karen Evich:284-758-2867:23 Edgecliff Place, Lincoln, NB 92743:11/3/35:58200
Karen Evich:284-758-2867:23 Edgecliff Place, Lincoln, NB 92743:11/3/35:58200
Fred Fardbarkle:674-843-1385:20 Parak Lane, DeLuth, MN 23850:4/12/23:780900
Fred Fardbarkle:674-843-1385:20 Parak Lane, DeLuth, MN 23850:4/12/23:780900
Lori Gortz:327-832-5728:3465 Mirlo Street, Peabody, MA 34756:10/2/65:35200
Paco Gutierrez:835-365-1284:454 Easy Street, Decatur, IL 75732:2/28/53:123500
Ephram Hardy:293-259-5395:235 CarltonLane, Joliet, IL 73858:8/12/20:56700
James Ikeda:834-938-8376:23445 Aster Ave., Allentown, NJ 83745:12/1/38:45000
Barbara Kertz:385-573-8326:832 Ponce Drive, Gary, IN 83756:12/1/46:268500
Lesley Kirstin:408-456-1234:4 Harvard Square, Boston, MA 02133:4/22/62:52600
William Kopf:846-836-2837:6937 Ware Road, Milton, PA 93756:9/21/46:43500
Sir Lancelot:837-835-8257:474 Camelot Boulevard, Bath, WY 28356:5/13/69:24500
Jesse Neal:408-233-8971:45 Rose Terrace, San Francisco, CA 92303:2/3/36:25000
Zippy Pinhead:834-823-8319:2356 Bizarro Ave., Farmount, IL 84357:1/1/67:89500
Arthur Putie:923-835-8745:23 Wimp Lane, Kensington, DL 38758:8/31/69:126000
Popeye Sailor:156-454-3322:945 Bluto Street, Anywhere, USA 29358:3/19/35:22350
Jose Santiago:385-898-8357:38 Fife Way, Abilene, TX 39673:1/5/58:95600
Tommy Savage:408-724-0140:1222 Oxbow Court, Sunnyvale, CA 94087:5/19/66:34200
Yukio Takeshida:387-827-1095:13 Uno Lane, Ashville, NC 23556:7/1/29:57000
Vinh Tranh:438-910-7449:8235 Maple Street, Wilmington, VM 29085:9/23/63:68900
(Refer to the database called datebook on the CD.)
| 1: | Print all lines containing the string San. |
| 2: | Print all lines where the person's first name starts with J. |
| 3: | Print all lines ending in 700. |
| 4: | Print all lines that don't contain 834. |
| 5: | Print all lines where birthdays are in December. |
| 6: | Print all lines where the phone number is in the 408 area code. |
| 7: | Print all lines containing an uppercase letter, followed by four lowercase letters, a comma, a space, and one uppercase letter. |
| 8: | Print lines where the last name begins with K or k. |
| 9: | Print lines preceded by a line number where the salary is a six-figure number. |
| 10: | Print lines containing Lincoln or lincoln (remember that grep is insensitive to case). |
[1] A word is also called a token.
[2] A word ia a sequence of alphanumeric characters starting at the beginning of a line or preceded by whitespace and ending in whitespace, punctuation, or a newline
| CONTENTS | |
EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 18