Updated: 2022/Sep/29

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GREP(1)                     General Commands Manual                    GREP(1)



NAME
       grep, egrep, fgrep - print lines matching a pattern

SYNOPSIS
       grep [options] PATTERN [FILE...]
       grep [options] [-e PATTERN | -f FILE] [FILE...]

DESCRIPTION
       Grep searches the named input FILEs (or standard input if no files are
       named, or the file name - is given) for lines containing a match to the
       given PATTERN.  By default, grep prints the matching lines.

       In addition, two variant programs egrep and fgrep are available.  Egrep
       is the same as grep -E.  Fgrep is the same as grep -F.

OPTIONS
       -A NUM, --after-context=NUM
              Print NUM lines of trailing context after matching lines.
              Places a line containing -- between contiguous groups of
              matches.

       -a, --text
              Process a binary file as if it were text; this is equivalent to
              the --binary-files=text option.

       -B NUM, --before-context=NUM
              Print NUM lines of leading context before matching lines.
              Places a line containing -- between contiguous groups of
              matches.

       -b, --byte-offset
              Print the byte offset within the input file before each line of
              output.

       --binary-files=TYPE
              If the first few bytes of a file indicate that the file contains
              binary data, assume that the file is of type TYPE.  By default,
              TYPE is binary, and grep normally outputs either a one-line
              message saying that a binary file matches, or no message if
              there is no match.  If TYPE is without-match, grep assumes that
              a binary file does not match; this is equivalent to the -I
              option.  If TYPE is text, grep processes a binary file as if it
              were text; this is equivalent to the -a option.  Warning: grep
              --binary-files=text might output binary garbage, which can have
              nasty side effects if the output is a terminal and if the
              terminal driver interprets some of it as commands.

       -C NUM, --context=NUM
              Print NUM lines of output context.  Places a line containing --
              between contiguous groups of matches.

       -c, --count
              Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching lines
              for each input file.  With the -v, --invert-match option (see
              below), count non-matching lines.

       --colour[=WHEN], --color[=WHEN]
              Surround the matching string with the marker find in GREP_COLOR
              environment variable. WHEN may be `never', `always', or `auto'

       -D ACTION, --devices=ACTION
              If an input file is a device, FIFO or socket, use ACTION to
              process it.  By default, ACTION is read, which means that
              devices are read just as if they were ordinary files.  If ACTION
              is skip, devices are silently skipped.

       -d ACTION, --directories=ACTION
              If an input file is a directory, use ACTION to process it.  By
              default, ACTION is read, which means that directories are read
              just as if they were ordinary files.  If ACTION is skip,
              directories are silently skipped.  If ACTION is recurse, grep
              reads all files under each directory, recursively; this is
              equivalent to the -r option.

       -E, --extended-regexp
              Interpret PATTERN as an extended regular expression (see below).

       -e PATTERN, --regexp=PATTERN
              Use PATTERN as the pattern; useful to protect patterns beginning
              with -.  May be specified more than once.

       -F, --fixed-strings
              Interpret PATTERN as a list of fixed strings, separated by
              newlines, any of which is to be matched.

       -f FILE, --file=FILE
              Obtain patterns from FILE, one per line.  The empty file
              contains zero patterns, and therefore matches nothing.

       -G, --basic-regexp
              Interpret PATTERN as a basic regular expression (see below).
              This is the default.

       -H, --with-filename
              Print the filename for each match.

       -h, --no-filename
              Suppress the prefixing of filenames on output when multiple
              files are searched.

       --help Output a brief help message.

       -I     Process a binary file as if it did not contain matching data;
              this is equivalent to the --binary-files=without-match option.

       -i, --ignore-case
              Ignore case distinctions in both the PATTERN and the input
              files.

       -L, --files-without-match
              Suppress normal output; instead print the name of each input
              file from which no output would normally have been printed.  The
              scanning will stop on the first match.

       --label=LABEL
              Displays input actually coming from standard input as input
              coming from file LABEL.  This is especially useful for tools
              like zgrep, e.g.  gzip -cd foo.gz |grep --label=foo something

       --line-buffered
              Use line buffering, it can be a performance penalty.

       -l, --files-with-matches
              Suppress normal output; instead print the name of each input
              file from which output would normally have been printed.  The
              scanning will stop on the first match.

       -m NUM, --max-count=NUM
              Stop reading a file after NUM matching lines.  If the input is
              standard input from a regular file, and NUM matching lines are
              output, grep ensures that the standard input is positioned to
              just after the last matching line before exiting, regardless of
              the presence of trailing context lines.  This enables a calling
              process to resume a search.  When grep stops after NUM matching
              lines, it outputs any trailing context lines.  When the -c or
              --count option is also used, grep does not output a count
              greater than NUM.  When the -v or --invert-match option is also
              used, grep stops after outputting NUM non-matching lines.

       --mmap If possible, use the mmap(2) system call to read input, instead
              of the default read(2) system call.  In some situations, --mmap
              yields better performance.  However, --mmap can cause undefined
              behavior (including core dumps) if an input file shrinks while
              grep is operating, or if an I/O error occurs.

       -n, --line-number
              Prefix each line of output with the line number within its input
              file.

       -o, --only-matching
              Show only the part of a matching line that matches PATTERN.

       -q, --quiet, --silent
              Quiet; do not write anything to standard output.  Exit
              immediately with zero status if any match is found, even if an
              error was detected.  Also see the -s or --no-messages option.

       -R, -r, --recursive
              Read all files under each directory, recursively; this is
              equivalent to the -d recurse option.  If no FILE is given, grep
              searches the current working directory.

         --include=PATTERN
              Recurse in directories only searching file matching PATTERN.

         --exclude=PATTERN
              Recurse in directories skip file matching PATTERN.

       -s, --no-messages
              Suppress error messages about nonexistent or unreadable files.
              Portability note: unlike GNU grep, traditional grep did not
              conform to POSIX.2, because traditional grep lacked a -q option
              and its -s option behaved like GNU grep's -q option.  Shell
              scripts intended to be portable to traditional grep should avoid
              both -q and -s and should redirect output to /dev/null instead.

       -U, --binary
              Treat the file(s) as binary.  By default, under MS-DOS and MS-
              Windows, grep guesses the file type by looking at the contents
              of the first 32KB read from the file.  If grep decides the file
              is a text file, it strips the CR characters from the original
              file contents (to make regular expressions with ^ and $ work
              correctly).  Specifying -U overrules this guesswork, causing all
              files to be read and passed to the matching mechanism verbatim;
              if the file is a text file with CR/LF pairs at the end of each
              line, this will cause some regular expressions to fail.  This
              option has no effect on platforms other than MS-DOS and MS-
              Windows.

       -u, --unix-byte-offsets
              Report Unix-style byte offsets.  This switch causes grep to
              report byte offsets as if the file were Unix-style text file,
              i.e. with CR characters stripped off.  This will produce results
              identical to running grep on a Unix machine.  This option has no
              effect unless -b option is also used; it has no effect on
              platforms other than MS-DOS and MS-Windows.

       -V, --version
              Print the version number of grep to standard error.  This
              version number should be included in all bug reports (see
              below).

       -v, --invert-match
              Invert the sense of matching, to select non-matching lines.

       -w, --word-regexp
              Select only those lines containing matches that form whole
              words.  The test is that the matching substring must either be
              at the beginning of the line, or preceded by a non-word
              constituent character.  Similarly, it must be either at the end
              of the line or followed by a non-word constituent character.
              Word-constituent characters are letters, digits, and the
              underscore.

       -x, --line-regexp
              Select only those matches that exactly match the whole line.

       -y     Obsolete synonym for -i.

       -Z, --null
              Output a zero byte (the ASCII NUL character) instead of the
              character that normally follows a file name.  For example, grep
              -lZ outputs a zero byte after each file name instead of the
              usual newline.  This option makes the output unambiguous, even
              in the presence of file names containing unusual characters like
              newlines.  This option can be used with commands like find
              -print0, perl -0, sort -z, and xargs -0 to process arbitrary
              file names, even those that contain newline characters.

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
       A regular expression is a pattern that describes a set of strings.
       Regular expressions are constructed analogously to arithmetic
       expressions, by using various operators to combine smaller expressions.

       Grep understands two different versions of regular expression syntax:
       "basic" and "extended."  In GNU grep, there is no difference in
       available functionality using either syntax.  In other implementations,
       basic regular expressions are less powerful.  The following description
       applies to extended regular expressions; differences for basic regular
       expressions are summarized afterwards.

       The fundamental building blocks are the regular expressions that match
       a single character.  Most characters, including all letters and digits,
       are regular expressions that match themselves.  Any metacharacter with
       special meaning may be quoted by preceding it with a backslash.

       A bracket expression is a list of characters enclosed by [ and ].  It
       matches any single character in that list; if the first character of
       the list is the caret ^ then it matches any character not in the list.
       For example, the regular expression [0123456789] matches any single
       digit.

       Within a bracket expression, a range expression consists of two
       characters separated by a hyphen.  It matches any single character that
       sorts between the two characters, inclusive, using the locale's
       collating sequence and character set.  For example, in the default C
       locale, [a-d] is equivalent to [abcd].  Many locales sort characters in
       dictionary order, and in these locales [a-d] is typically not
       equivalent to [abcd]; it might be equivalent to [aBbCcDd], for example.
       To obtain the traditional interpretation of bracket expressions, you
       can use the C locale by setting the LC_ALL environment variable to the
       value C.

       Finally, certain named classes of characters are predefined within
       bracket expressions, as follows.  Their names are self explanatory, and
       they are [:alnum:], [:alpha:], [:cntrl:], [:digit:], [:graph:],
       [:lower:], [:print:], [:punct:], [:space:], [:upper:], and [:xdigit:].
       For example, [[:alnum:]] means [0-9A-Za-z], except the latter form
       depends upon the C locale and the ASCII character encoding, whereas the
       former is independent of locale and character set.  (Note that the
       brackets in these class names are part of the symbolic names, and must
       be included in addition to the brackets delimiting the bracket list.)
       Most metacharacters lose their special meaning inside lists.  To
       include a literal ] place it first in the list.  Similarly, to include
       a literal ^ place it anywhere but first.  Finally, to include a literal
       - place it last.

       The period .  matches any single character.  The symbol \w is a synonym
       for [[:alnum:]] and \W is a synonym for [^[:alnum:]].

       The caret ^ and the dollar sign $ are metacharacters that respectively
       match the empty string at the beginning and end of a line.  The symbols
       \< and \> respectively match the empty string at the beginning and end
       of a word.  The symbol \b matches the empty string at the edge of a
       word, and \B matches the empty string provided it's not at the edge of
       a word.

       A regular expression may be followed by one of several repetition
       operators:
       ?      The preceding item is optional and matched at most once.
       *      The preceding item will be matched zero or more times.
       +      The preceding item will be matched one or more times.
       {n}    The preceding item is matched exactly n times.
       {n,}   The preceding item is matched n or more times.
       {n,m}  The preceding item is matched at least n times, but not more
              than m times.

       Two regular expressions may be concatenated; the resulting regular
       expression matches any string formed by concatenating two substrings
       that respectively match the concatenated subexpressions.

       Two regular expressions may be joined by the infix operator |; the
       resulting regular expression matches any string matching either
       subexpression.

       Repetition takes precedence over concatenation, which in turn takes
       precedence over alternation.  A whole subexpression may be enclosed in
       parentheses to override these precedence rules.

       The backreference \n, where n is a single digit, matches the substring
       previously matched by the nth parenthesized subexpression of the
       regular expression.

       In basic regular expressions the metacharacters ?, +, {, |, (, and )
       lose their special meaning; instead use the backslashed versions \?,
       \+, \{, \|, \(, and \).

       Traditional egrep did not support the { metacharacter, and some egrep
       implementations support \{ instead, so portable scripts should avoid {
       in egrep patterns and should use [{] to match a literal {.

       GNU egrep attempts to support traditional usage by assuming that { is
       not special if it would be the start of an invalid interval
       specification.  For example, the shell command egrep '{1' searches for
       the two-character string {1 instead of reporting a syntax error in the
       regular expression.  POSIX.2 allows this behavior as an extension, but
       portable scripts should avoid it.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       Grep's behavior is affected by the following environment variables.

       A locale LC_foo is specified by examining the three environment
       variables LC_ALL, LC_foo, LANG, in that order.  The first of these
       variables that is set specifies the locale.  For example, if LC_ALL is
       not set, but LC_MESSAGES is set to pt_BR, then Brazilian Portuguese is
       used for the LC_MESSAGES locale.  The C locale is used if none of these
       environment variables are set, or if the locale catalog is not
       installed, or if grep was not compiled with national language support
       (NLS).

       GREP_OPTIONS
              This variable specifies default options to be placed in front of
              any explicit options.  For example, if GREP_OPTIONS is
              '--binary-files=without-match --directories=skip', grep behaves
              as if the two options --binary-files=without-match and
              --directories=skip had been specified before any explicit
              options.  Option specifications are separated by whitespace.  A
              backslash escapes the next character, so it can be used to
              specify an option containing whitespace or a backslash.

       GREP_COLOR
              Specifies the marker for highlighting.

       LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE, LANG
              These variables specify the LC_COLLATE locale, which determines
              the collating sequence used to interpret range expressions like
              [a-z].

       LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG
              These variables specify the LC_CTYPE locale, which determines
              the type of characters, e.g., which characters are whitespace.

       LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, LANG
              These variables specify the LC_MESSAGES locale, which determines
              the language that grep uses for messages.  The default C locale
              uses American English messages.

       POSIXLY_CORRECT
              If set, grep behaves as POSIX.2 requires; otherwise, grep
              behaves more like other GNU programs.  POSIX.2 requires that
              options that follow file names must be treated as file names; by
              default, such options are permuted to the front of the operand
              list and are treated as options.  Also, POSIX.2 requires that
              unrecognized options be diagnosed as "illegal", but since they
              are not really against the law the default is to diagnose them
              as "invalid".  POSIXLY_CORRECT also disables
              _N_GNU_nonoption_argv_flags_, described below.

       _N_GNU_nonoption_argv_flags_
              (Here N is grep's numeric process ID.)  If the ith character of
              this environment variable's value is 1, do not consider the ith
              operand of grep to be an option, even if it appears to be one.
              A shell can put this variable in the environment for each
              command it runs, specifying which operands are the results of
              file name wildcard expansion and therefore should not be treated
              as options.  This behavior is available only with the GNU C
              library, and only when POSIXLY_CORRECT is not set.

DIAGNOSTICS
       Normally, exit status is 0 if selected lines are found and 1 otherwise.
       But the exit status is 2 if an error occurred, unless the -q or --quiet
       or --silent option is used and a selected line is found.

BUGS
       Email bug reports to bug-grep@gnu.org.

       Large repetition counts in the {n,m} construct may cause grep to use
       lots of memory.  In addition, certain other obscure regular expressions
       require exponential time and space, and may cause grep to run out of
       memory.

       Backreferences are very slow, and may require exponential time.



GNU Project                    September 3 2022                        GREP(1)