egrep [ option ] ... [ expression ] [ file ] ...
fgrep [ option ] ... [ strings ] [ file ]
In all cases the file name is shown if there is more than one input file. 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 description `character' excludes newline:
A \ followed by a single character other than newline matches that character.
The character ^ matches the beginning of a line.
The character $ matches the end of a line.
A . (period) 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 abbreviated as in `a-z0-9'. A ] may occur only as the first character of the string. A literal - must be placed where it can't be mistaken as a range indicator.
A regular expression followed by an * (asterisk) matches a sequence of 0 or more matches of the regular expression. A regular expression followed by a + (plus) matches a sequence of 1 or more matches of the regular expression. A regular expression followed by a ? (question mark) matches a sequence of 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.
Ideally there should be only one grep, but we don't know a single algorithm that spans a wide enough range of space-time tradeoffs.
Created by unroff & hp-tools. © somebody (See intro for details). All Rights Reserved. Last modified 11/5/97