Getting Started

Option examples

Option Example Operation
-i grep -i ^DA demo.txt Forgets about case sensitivity
-w grep -w "of" demo.txt Search only for the full word
-A grep -A 3 'Exception' error.log Display 3 lines after matching string
-B grep -B 4 'Exception' error.log Display 4 lines before matching string
-C grep -C 5 'Exception' error.log Display 5 lines around matching string
-r grep -r 'quickref.me' /var/log/nginx/ Recursive search (within subdirs)
-v grep -v 'warning' /var/log/syslog Return all lines which don't match the pattern
-e grep -e '^al' filename Use regex (lines starting with 'al')
-E grep -E 'ja(s cks)on' filename
-c grep -c 'error' /var/log/syslog Count the number of matches
-l grep -l 'robot' /var/log/* Print the name of the file(s) of matches
-o grep -o search_string filename Only show the matching part of the string
-n grep -n "go" demo.txt Show the line numbers of the matches

Usage

Search standard output (i.e. a stream of text)

$ grep [options] search\_string

Search for an exact string in file:

$ grep [options] search\_string path/to/file

Print lines in myfile.txt containing the string "mellon"

$ grep 'mellon' myfile.txt

Wildcards are accepted in filename.

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