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15 Practical Grep Command Examples In Linux / UNIX

15 Practical Grep Command Examples In Linux / UNIX

by S A THI Y A MO O RTHY on MA RCH 2 6 , 2 0 0 9

You should get a grip on the Linux grep

command.
This is part of the on-going 15 Examples
series, where 15 detailed examples will be
provided for a specific command or
functionality. Earlier we discussed 15
practical examples for Linux find
command, Linuxcommand line
history and mysqladmin command.
Photo courtesy of Alexmes

In this article let us review 15 practical examples of Linux grep

command that will be very useful to both newbies and experts.

First create the following demo_file that will be used in the examples
below to demonstrate grep command.

$ cat demo_file
THIS LINE IS THE 1ST UPPER CASE LINE IN THIS FILE.
this line is the 1st lower case line in this file.
This Line Has All Its First Character Of The Word With Upper Case.
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Two lines above this line is empty.

And this is the last line.

1. Search for the given string in a single file

The basic usage of grep command is to search for a specific string
in the specified file as shown below.

Syntax:
grep "literal_string" filename

$ grep "this" demo_file

this line is the 1st lower case line in this file.
Two lines above this line is empty.
And this is the last line.

2. Checking for the given string in multiple files.

Syntax:
grep "string" FILE_PATTERN

This is also a basic usage of grep command. For this example, let
us copy the demo_file to demo_file1. The grep output will also
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include the file name in front of the line that matched the specific
pattern as shown below. When the Linux shell sees the meta
character, it does the expansion and gives all the files as input to
grep.

$ cp demo_file demo_file1
$ grep "this" demo_*
demo_file:this line is the 1st lower case line in this file.
demo_file:Two lines above this line is empty.
demo_file:And this is the last line.
demo_file1:this line is the 1st lower case line in this file.
demo_file1:Two lines above this line is empty.
demo_file1:And this is the last line.

3. Case insensitive search using grep -i

Syntax:
grep -i "string" FILE

This is also a basic usage of the grep. This searches for the given
string/pattern case insensitively. So it matches all the words such as
the, THE and The case insensitively as shown below.

$ grep -i "the" demo_file

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THIS LINE IS THE 1ST UPPER CASE LINE IN THIS FILE.

this line is the 1st lower case line in this file.
This Line Has All Its First Character Of The Word With Upper Case.
And this is the last line.

4. Match regular expression in files

Syntax:
grep "REGEX" filename

This is a very powerful feature, if you can use use regular

expression effectively. In the following example, it searches for all
the pattern that starts with lines and ends with empty with
anything in-between. i.e To search lines[anything inbetween]empty in the demo_file.

$ grep "lines.*empty" demo_file

Two lines above this line is empty.

From documentation of grep: A regular expression may be followed

by one of several repetition operators:
? The preceding item is optional and matched at most once.
* The preceding item will be matched zero or more times.
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+ The preceding item will be matched one or more times.

{n} The preceding item is matched exactly n times.
{n,} The preceding item is matched n or more times.
{,m} The preceding item is matched at most m times.
{n,m} The preceding item is matched at least n times, but not
more than m times.

5. Checking for full words, not for sub-strings using

grep -w
If you want to search for a word, and to avoid it to match the
substrings use -w option. Just doing out a normal search will show
out all the lines.
The following example is the regular grep where it is searching for
is. When you search for is, without any option it will show out is,
his, this and everything which has the substring is.

$ grep -i "is" demo_file

THIS LINE IS THE 1ST UPPER CASE LINE IN THIS FILE.
this line is the 1st lower case line in this file.
This Line Has All Its First Character Of The Word With Upper Case.
Two lines above this line is empty.
And this is the last line.

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The following example is the WORD grep where it is searching only

for the word is. Please note that this output does not contain the
line This Line Has All Its First Character Of The Word With Upper
Case, even though is is there in the This, as the following is
looking only for the word is and not for this.

$ grep -iw "is" demo_file

THIS LINE IS THE 1ST UPPER CASE LINE IN THIS FILE.
this line is the 1st lower case line in this file.
Two lines above this line is empty.
And this is the last line.

6. Displaying lines before/after/around the match

using grep -A, -B and -C
When doing a grep on a huge file, it may be useful to see some
lines after the match. You might feel handy if grep can show you not
only the matching lines but also the lines after/before/around the
match.

Please create the following demo_text file for this example.

$ cat demo_text
4. Vim Word Navigation

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You may want to do several navigation in relation to the words, suc

*
*
*
*
*
*

e
E
b
B
w
W

go
go
go
go
go
go

to
to
to
to
to
to

the
the
the
the
the
the

end of the current word.

end of the current WORD.
previous (before) word.
previous (before) WORD.
next word.
next WORD.

WORD - WORD consists of a sequence of non-blank characters, separat

word - word consists of a sequence of letters, digits and underscor
Example to show the difference between WORD and word
* 192.168.1.1 - single WORD
* 192.168.1.1 - seven words.

6.1 Display N lines after match

-A is the option which prints the specified N lines after the match as
shown below.

Syntax:
grep -A <N> "string" FILENAME

The following example prints the matched line, along with the 3 lines
after it.
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$ grep -A 3 -i "example" demo_text

Example to show the difference between WORD and word
* 192.168.1.1 - single WORD
* 192.168.1.1 - seven words.

6.2 Display N lines before match

-B is the option which prints the specified N lines before the match.

Syntax:
grep -B <N> "string" FILENAME

When you had option to show the N lines after match, you have the
-B option for the opposite.

$ grep -B 2 "single WORD" demo_text

Example to show the difference between WORD and word
* 192.168.1.1 - single WORD

6.3 Display N lines around match

-C is the option which prints the specified N lines before the match.
In some occasion you might want the match to be appeared with the
lines from both the side. This options shows N lines in both the
side(before & after) of match.
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$ grep -C 2 "Example" demo_text

word - word consists of a sequence of letters, digits and underscor
Example to show the difference between WORD and word
* 192.168.1.1 - single WORD

7. Highlighting the search using GREP_OPTIONS

As grep prints out lines from the file by the pattern / string you had
given, if you wanted it to highlight which part matches the line, then
you need to follow the following way.
When you do the following export you will get the highlighting of the
matched searches. In the following example, it will highlight all the
this when you set the GREP_OPTIONS environment variable as
shown below.

$ export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=auto' GREP_COLOR='100;8'

$ grep this demo_file
this line is the 1st lower case line in this file.
Two lines above this line is empty.
And this is the last line.

8. Searching in all files recursively using grep -r

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When you want to search in all the files under the current directory
and its sub directory. -r option is the one which you need to use.
The following example will look for the string ramesh in all the files
in the current directory and all its subdirectory.

$ grep -r "ramesh" *

9. Invert match using grep -v

You had different options to show the lines matched, to show the
lines before match, and to show the lines after match, and to
highlight match. So definitely Youd also want the option -v to do
invert match.
When you want to display the lines which does not matches the
given string/pattern, use the option -v as shown below. This
example will display all the lines that did not match the word go.

$ grep -v "go" demo_text

4. Vim Word Navigation

You may want to do several navigation in relation to the words, suc

WORD - WORD consists of a sequence of non-blank characters, separat

word - word consists of a sequence of letters, digits and underscor

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Example to show the difference between WORD and word

* 192.168.1.1 - single WORD
* 192.168.1.1 - seven words.

10. display the lines which does not matches all the
given pattern.
Syntax:
grep -v -e "pattern" -e "pattern"

$ cat test-file.txt
a
b
c
d
$ grep -v -e "a" -e "b" -e "c" test-file.txt
d

11. Counting the number of matches using grep -c

When you want to count that how many lines matches the given
pattern/string, then use the option -c.

Syntax:
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grep -c "pattern" filename

$ grep -c "go" demo_text

6

When you want do find out how many lines matches the pattern

$ grep -c this demo_file

3

When you want do find out how many lines that does not match the
pattern

$ grep -v -c this demo_file

4

12. Display only the file names which matches the

given pattern using grep -l
If you want the grep to show out only the file names which matched
the given pattern, use the -l (lower-case L) option.

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When you give multiple files to the grep as input, it displays the
names of file which contains the text that matches the pattern, will
be very handy when you try to find some notes in your whole
directory structure.

$ grep -l this demo_*

demo_file
demo_file1

13. Show only the matched string

By default grep will show the line which matches the given
pattern/string, but if you want the grep to show out only the matched
string of the pattern then use the -o option.
It might not be that much useful when you give the string straight
forward. But it becomes very useful when you give a regex pattern
and trying to see what it matches as

$ grep -o "is.*line" demo_file

is line is the 1st lower case line
is line
is is the last line

14. Show the position of match in the line

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When you want grep to show the position where it matches the
pattern in the file, use the following options as

Syntax:
grep -o -b "pattern" file

$ cat temp-file.txt
12345
12345
$ grep -o -b "3" temp-file.txt
2:3
8:3

Note: The output of the grep command above is not the position in
the line, it is byte offset of the whole file.

15. Show line number while displaying the output

using grep -n
To show the line number of file with the line matched. It does 1based line numbering for each file. Use -n option to utilize this
feature.

$ grep -n "go" demo_text

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5: * e - go to the end of the current word.

6: * E - go to the end of the current WORD.
7: * b - go to the previous (before) word.
8: * B - go to the previous (before) WORD.
9: * w - go to the next word.
10: * W - go to the next WORD.

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