< Previous | Contents | Next >
5.3.1. More about grep
As we saw in Section 3.3.3.4, grep scans the output line per line, searching for matching patterns. All lines containing the pattern will be printed to standard output. This behavior can be reversed using the -v option.
Some examples: suppose we want to know which files in a certain directory have been modified in February:
jenny:~> ls -la | grep Feb The grep command, like most commands, is case sensitive. Use the -i option to make no difference between upper and lower case. A lot of GNU extensions are available as well, such as --colour, which is helpful to
highlight searchterms in long lines, and --after-context, which prints the number of lines after the last
matching line. You can issue a recursive grep that searches all subdirectories of encountered directories using the -r option. As usual, options can be combined.
Regular expressions can be used to further detail the exact character matches you want to select out of all the input lines. The best way to start with regular expressions is indeed to read the grep documentation. An excellent chapter is included in the grep Info page. Since it would lead us too far discussing the ins and outs of regular expressions, it is strongly advised to start here if you want to know more about them.