NAME

grep, egrep, fgrep − print lines matching a regular expression

SYNOPSIS

grep [ −CVbchilnsvwx ] [ −num ] [ −AB num ] [ [ −e ] expr | −f file ] [ files ...  ]

DESCRIPTION

Grep searches the files listed in the arguments (or standard input if no files are given) for all lines that contain a match for the given expr. If any lines match, they are printed.

Also, if any matches were found, grep will exit with a status of 0, but if no matches were found it will exit with a status of 1.  This is useful for building shell scripts that use grep as a condition for, for example, the if statement. 

When invoked as egrep the syntax of the expr is slightly different; See below. 

Fgrep does not support regular expression metacharacters. 

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

(grep)(egrep)(explanation)

cca single (non-meta) character matches itself. 

..matches any single character except newline. 

\??postfix operator; preceeding item is optional. 

∗∗postfix operator; preceeding item 0 or more times. 

\++postfix operator; preceeding item 1 or more times. 

\||infix operator; matches either argument. 

^^matches the empty string at the beginning of a line. 

$$matches the empty string at the end of a line. 

\<\<matches the empty string at the beginning of a word. 

\>\>matches the empty string at the end of a word. 

[chars][chars]match any character in the given class; if the first character after [ is ^, match any character not in the given class; a range of characters may be specified by first−last; for example, \W (below) is equivalent to the class [^A−Za−z0−9]

\( \)( )parentheses are used to override operator precedence. 

\digit\digit\n matches a repeat of the text matched earlier in the regexp by the subexpression inside the nth opening parenthesis. 

\\any special character may be preceded by a backslash to match it literally. 

(the following are for compatibility with GNU Emacs)

\b\bmatches the empty string at the edge of a word. 

\B\Bmatches the empty string if not at the edge of a word. 

\w\wmatches word-constituent characters (letters & digits). 

\W\Wmatches characters that are not word-constituent. 

Operator precedence is (highest to lowest) ?, ∗, and +, concatenation, and finally |.  All other constructs are syntactically identical to normal characters.  For the truly interested, the file dfa.c describes (and implements) the exact grammar understood by the parser. 

OPTIONS

−A num
print <num> lines of context after every matching line

−B num
print num lines of context before every matching line

−C print 2 lines of context on each side of every match

−num print num lines of context on each side of every match

−V print the version number on the diagnostic output

−b print every match preceded by its byte offset

−c print a total count of matching lines only

−e expr
search for expr; useful if expr begins with −

−f file search for the expression contained in file

−h don’t display filenames on matches

−i ignore case difference when comparing strings

−l list files containing matches only

−n print each match preceded by its line number

−s run silently producing no output except error messages

−v print only lines that contain no matches for the <expr>

−w print only lines where the match is a complete word

−x print only lines where the match is a whole line

SEE ALSO

emacs(1), ed(1), sh(1), GNU Emacs Manual

INCOMPATIBILITIES

The following incompatibilities with UNIX grep exist:

The context-dependent meaning of ∗ is not quite the same (grep only). 

−b prints a byte offset instead of a block offset. 

The {m,n} construct of System V grep is not implemented. 

BUGS

GNU e?grep has been thoroughly debugged and tested by several people over a period of several months; we think it’s a reliable beast or we wouldn’t distribute it.  If by some fluke of the universe you discover a bug, send a detailed description (including options, regular expressions, and a copy of an input file that can reproduce it) to me, mike@wheaties.ai.mit.edu. 

There is also a newsgroup, gnu.utils.bug, for reporting FSF utility programs’ bugs and fixes; but before reporting something as a bug, please try to be sure that it really is a bug, not a misunderstanding or a deliberate feature.  Also, include the version number of the utility program you are running in every bug report that you send in.  Please do not send anything but bug reports to this newsgroup. 

AVAILABILITY

GNU grep is free; anyone may redistribute copies of grep to anyone under the terms stated in the GNU General Public License, a copy of which may be found in each copy of GNU Emacs. See also the comment at the beginning of the source code file grep.c.

Copies of GNU grep may sometimes be received packaged with distributions of Unix systems, but it is never included in the scope of any license covering those systems.  Such inclusion violates the terms on which distribution is permitted.  In fact, the primary purpose of the General Public License is to prohibit anyone from attaching any other restrictions to redistribution of any of the Free Software Foundation programs. 

AUTHORS

Mike Haertel wrote the deterministic regexp code and the bulk of the program. 

James A. Woods is responsible for the hybridized search strategy of using Boyer-Moore-Gosper fixed-string search as a filter before calling the general regexp matcher. 

Arthur David Olson contributed code that finds fixed strings for the aforementioned BMG search for a large class of regexps. 

Richard Stallman wrote the backtracking regexp matcher that is used for \digit backreferences, as well as the getopt that is provided for 4.2BSD sites.  The backtracking matcher was originally written for GNU Emacs. 

D. A. Gwyn wrote the C alloca emulation that is provided so System V machines can run this program.  (Alloca is used only by RMS’ backtracking matcher, and then only rarely, so there is no loss if your machine doesn’t have a "real" alloca.) 

Scott Anderson and Henry Spencer designed the regression tests used in the "regress" script. 

Paul Placeway wrote the original version of this manual page. 

GNU Project  —  1988 December 13