egrep

egrep [options] [regexp] [files]

Search one or more files for lines that match a regular expression regexp. egrep doesn't support the metacharacters \(, \), \n, \<, \>, \{, or \}, but does support the other metacharacters, as well as the extended set +, ?, |, and ( ). Remember to enclose these characters in quotes. Regular expressions are described in Chapter 6, Pattern Matching. Exit status is 0 if any lines match, 1 if not, and 2 for errors. See also grep and fgrep.

Options

-b

Precede each line with its block number. (Not terribly useful.)

-c

Print only a count of matched lines.

-e regexp

Use this if regexp begins with -.

-f file

Take expression from file.

-h

List matched lines but not filenames (inverse of -l).

-i

Ignore uppercase and lowercase distinctions.

-l

List filenames but not matched lines.

-n

Print lines and their line numbers.

-s

Silent mode: print only error messages, and return the exit status. Not on SVR4, but common on most commercial Unix systems.

-v

Print all lines that don't match regexp.

Examples

Search for occurrences of Victor or Victoria in file:

egrep 'Victor(ia)?' file
egrep '(Victor|Victoria)' file

Find and print strings such as old.doc1 or new.doc2 in files, and include their line numbers:

egrep -n '(old|new)\.doc?' files