term% cat index.txt GREP(1) General Commands Manual GREP(1)
NAME
grep, egrep, fgrep - search a file for a pattern
SYNOPSIS
grep [ option ] ... expression [ file ] ...
egrep [ option ] ... [ expression ] [ file ] ...
fgrep [ option ] ... [ strings ] [ file ]
DESCRIPTION
Commands of the grep family search the input files (standard input de‐
fault) for lines matching a pattern. Normally, each line found is
copied to the standard output; unless the -h flag is used, the file
name is shown if there is more than one input file.
Grep patterns are limited regular expressions in the style of ed(1); it
uses a compact nondeterministic algorithm. Egrep patterns are full
regular expressions; it uses a fast deterministic algorithm that some‐
times needs exponential space. Fgrep patterns are fixed strings; it is
fast and compact.
The following options are recognized.
-v All lines but those matching are printed.
-c Only a count of matching lines is printed.
-l The names of files with matching lines are listed (once) sepa‐
rated by newlines.
-n Each line is preceded by its line number in the file.
-b Each line is preceded by the block number on which it was found.
This is sometimes useful in locating disk block numbers by con‐
text.
-s No output is produced, only status.
-h Do not print filename headers with output lines.
-y Lower case letters in the pattern will also match upper case
letters in the input (grep only).
-e expression
Same as a simple expression argument, but useful when the ex‐
pression begins with a -.
-f file
The regular expression (egrep) or string list (fgrep) is taken
from the file.
-x (Exact) only lines matched in their entirety are printed (fgrep
only).
Care should be taken when using the characters $ * [ ^ | ? ' " ( ) and
\ in the expression as they are also meaningful to the Shell. It is
safest to enclose the entire expression argument in single quotes ' '.
Fgrep searches for lines that contain one of the (newline-separated)
strings.
Egrep accepts extended regular expressions. In the following descrip‐
tion `character' excludes newline:
A \ followed by a single character matches that character.
The character ^ ($) matches the beginning (end) of a line.
A . matches any character.
A single character not otherwise endowed with special meaning
matches that character.
A string enclosed in brackets [] matches any single character
from the string. Ranges of ASCII character codes may be abbre‐
viated as in `a-z0-9'. A ] may occur only as the first charac‐
ter of the string. A literal - must be placed where it can't be
mistaken as a range indicator.
A regular expression followed by * (+, ?) matches a sequence of
0 or more (1 or more, 0 or 1) matches of the regular expression.
Two regular expressions concatenated match a match of the first
followed by a match of the second.
Two regular expressions separated by | or newline match either a
match for the first or a match for the second.
A regular expression enclosed in parentheses matches a match for
the regular expression.
The order of precedence of operators at the same parenthesis level is
[] then *+? then concatenation then | and newline.
SEE ALSO
ed(1), sed(1), sh(1)
DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is 0 if any matches are found, 1 if none, 2 for syntax er‐
rors or inaccessible files.
BUGS
Ideally there should be only one grep, but we don't know a single algo‐
rithm that spans a wide enough range of space-time tradeoffs.
Lines are limited to 256 characters; longer lines are truncated.
GREP(1)