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Alevel Unix 09april20 AKM

The grep command in Unix/Linux is used to search for lines matching a specified pattern using regular expressions. It supports various options for case sensitivity, line numbering, and pattern counting, and utilizes special characters for anchoring, wildcards, and character ranges. Examples illustrate its application in matching lines based on specific criteria.

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6 views2 pages

Alevel Unix 09april20 AKM

The grep command in Unix/Linux is used to search for lines matching a specified pattern using regular expressions. It supports various options for case sensitivity, line numbering, and pattern counting, and utilizes special characters for anchoring, wildcards, and character ranges. Examples illustrate its application in matching lines based on specific criteria.

Uploaded by

Ksh priya99
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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grep command

Grep command in Unix/Linux is the short form of ‘global search for the regular expression’.

The grep command is a filter that is used to search for lines matching a specified pattern and print the
matching lines to standard output.

Syntax:

grep [options] [pattern] [file]

The pattern is specified as a regular expression. A regular expression is a string of characters that is used
to specify a pattern matching rule. Special characters are used to define the matching rules and
positions.

#1) Anchor Characters: ‘^’ and ‘$’ at the beginning and end of the pattern are used to anchor the pattern
to the start of the line, and to the end of the line respectively.

Example: “^Name” matches all lines that start with the string “Name”. The strings “\<” and “\>” are
used to anchor the pattern to the start and end of a word respectively.

#2) Wildcard Character: ‘.’ Is used to match any character.

Example:“^.$” will match all lines with any single character.

#3) Escaped Characters: Any of the special characters can be matched as a regular character by escaping
them with a ‘\’.

Example: “\$\*” will match the lines that contain the string “$*”

#4) Character Range: A set of characters enclosed in a ‘[‘ and ‘]’ pair specify a range of characters to be
matched.

Example: “[aeiou]” will match all lines that contain a vowel. A hyphen can be used while specifying a
range to shorten a set of consecutive characters. E.g. “[0-9]” will match all lines that contain a digit. A
carat can be used at the beginning of the range to specify a negative range. E.g. “[^xyz]” will match all
lines that do not contain x, y or z.
#5) Repetition Modifier: A ‘*’ after a character or group of characters is used to allow matching zero or
more instances of the preceding pattern.

The grep command supports a number of options for additional controls on the matching:

-i: performs a case-insensitive search.

-n: displays the lines containing the pattern along with the line numbers.

-v: displays the lines not containing the specified pattern.

-c: displays the count of the matching patterns.

Examples:

Match all lines that start with ‘hello’. E.g: “hello there”

$ grep “^hello” file1

Match all lines that end with ‘done’. E.g: “well done”

$ grep “done$” file1

Match all lines that contain any of the letters ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’ or ‘e’.

$ grep “[a-e]” file1

Match all lines that do not contain a vowel

$ grep “[^aeiou]” file1

Match all lines that start with a digit following zero or more spaces. E.g: “ 1.” or “2.”

$ grep “ *[0-9]” file1

Match all lines that contain the word hello in upper-case or lower-case

$ grep -i “hello”

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