I have a file test-matching.txt that looks like this:
ba
bababa
baba
babadooba
According to the grep man page, I should be able to get all but the first line using the expression
grep "ba{2,}" test-matching.txt
This should match all the lines containing instances of a string with 2 or more "ba's". However, when I run it, I get no output.
First I tried grep "ba" test-matching.txt just to make sure it was working at all, and it gave me all four lines as output.
I've also tried the following, each with no output:
With the -e option: grep -e "ba{2,}" test-matching.txt
With the -e option and single quotes: grep -e 'ba{2,}' test-matching.txt
With the -e option and escaped braces: grep -e "ba\{2,\}" test-matching.txt
Without the -e option and single quotes: grep 'ba{2,}' test-matching.txt
Without the -e option and escaped braces: grep "ba\{2,\}" test-matching.txt
With {2} instead of {2,}: grep -e 'ba{2}' test-matching.txt
With {2} instead of {2,} and the -e option: grep -e 'ba{2} test-matching.txt
etc.
What is the correct way match all the lines of "ba" concatenated 2 or more times?
Use egrep or grep -E (not grep -e) if you want to use Extended regular expression syntax. If you want to use basic regular expression syntax, you need to backslash-escape the braces. Finally, if you want to repeat ba, you need to group: egrep '(ba){2,}', or grep '\(ba\)\{2,\}' if you prefer using basic regular expressions.
ba{2,} hits only the a
baa
baaa
baaaa
etc
You need (ba){2,} to make it works on group.
Try:
egrep "(ba){2,}" file
or
grep "\(ba\)\{2,\}" file
bababa
baba
babadooba
Related
I have two regular expressions:
$ grep -E '\-\- .*$' *.sql
$ sed -E '\-\- .*$' *.sql
(I am trying to grep lines in sql files that have comments and remove lines in sql files that have comments)
The grep command works using this regex; however, the sed returns the following error:
sed: -e expression #1, char 7: unterminated address regex
What am I doing incorrectly with sed?
(The space after the two hyphens is required for sql comments if you are unfamiliar with MySql comments of this type)
You're trying to use:
sed -E '\-\- .*$' *.sql
Here sed command is not correct because you're not really telling sed to do something.
It should be:
sed -n '/-- /p' *.sql
and equivalent grep would be:
grep -- '-- ' *.sql
or even better with a fixed string search:
grep -F -- '-- ' *.sql
Using -- to separate pattern and arguments in grep command.
There is no need to escape - in a regex if it is outside bracket expression (or character class) i.e. [...].
Based on comments below it seems OP's intent is to remove commented section in all *.sql files that start with 2 hyphens.
You may use this sed for that:
sed -i 's/-- .*//g' *.sql
The problem here is not the regex, the problem is that sed requires a command. The equivalent of your grep would be:
sed -n '/\-\- .*$/p'
You suppress output for non-matching lines -n ... you search (wrap your regex in slashes) and you print p (after the last slash).
P.S.: As Anub pointed out, escaping the hyphens - inside the regex is unnecessary.
You are trying to use sed's \cregexpc syntax where with \-<...> you are telling sed the delimiter character you want use is a dash -, but you didn't terminate it where it should be: \-<...>- also add d command to delete those lines.
sed '\-\-\-.*$-d' infile
see man sed about that:
\cregexpc
Match lines matching the regular expression regexp. The c may be any character.
if default / was used this was not required so:
sed '/--.*$/d' infile
or simply:
sed '/^--/d' infile
and more accurately:
sed '/^[[:blank:]]*--/d' infile
Currently I'm trying to use sed with regex on Solaris but it doesn't work.
I need to show only lines matching to my regex.
sed -n -E '/^[a-zA-Z0-9]*$|^a_[a-zA-Z0-9]*$/p'
input file:
grtad
a_pitr
_aupa
a__as
baman
12353
ai345
ki_ag
-MXx2
!!!23
+_)#*
I want to show only lines matching to above regex:
grtad
a_pitr
baman
12353
ai345
Is there another way to use alternative? Is it possible in perl?
Thanks for any solutions.
With Perl
perl -ne 'print if /^(a_)?[a-zA-Z0-9]*$/' input.txt
The (a_)? matches a_ one-or-zero times, so optionally. It may or may not be there.
The (a_) also captures the match, what is not needed. So you can use (?:a_)? instead. The ?: makes () only group what is inside (so ? applies to the whole thing), but not remember it.
with grep
$ grep -xiE '(a_)?[a-z0-9]*' ip.txt
grtad
a_pitr
baman
12353
ai345
-x match whole line
-i ignore case
-E extended regex, if not available, use grep -xi '\(a_\)\?[a-z0-9]*'
(a_)? zero or one time match a_
[a-z0-9]* zero or more alphabets or numbers
With sed
sed -nE '/^(a_)?[a-zA-Z0-9]*$/p' ip.txt
or, with GNU sed
sed -nE '/^(a_)?[a-z0-9]*$/Ip' ip.txt
I have a file with strings similar to this:
abcd u'current_count': u'2', u'total_count': u'3', u'order_id': u'90'
I have to find current_count and total_count for each line of file. I am trying below command but its not working. Please help.
grep current_count file | sed "s/.*\('current_count': u'\d+'\).*/\1/"
It is outputting the whole line but I want something like this:
'current_count': u'3', 'total_count': u'3'
It's printing the whole line because the pattern in the s command doesn't match, so no substitution happens.
sed regexes don't support \d for digits, or x+ for xx*. GNU sed has a -r option to enable extended-regex support so + will be a meta-character, but \d still doesn't work. GNU sed also allows \+ as a meta-character in basic regex mode, but that's not POSIX standard.
So anyway, this will work:
echo -e "foo\nabcd u'current_count': u'2', u'total_count': u'3', u'order_id': u'90'" |
sed -nr "s/.*('current_count': u'[0-9]+').*/\1/p"
# output: 'current_count': u'2'
Notice that I skip the grep by using sed -n s///p. I could also have used /current_count/ as an address:
sed -r -e '/current_count/!d' -e "s/.*('current_count': u'[0-9]+').*/\1/"
Or with just grep printing only the matching part of the pattern, instead of the whole line:
grep -E -o "'current_count': u'[[:digit:]]+'
(or egrep instead of grep -E). I forget if grep -o is POSIX-required behaviour.
For me this looks like some sort of serialized Python data. Basically I would try to find out the origin of that data and parse it properly.
However, while being hackish, sed can also being used here:
sed "s/.*current_count': [a-z]'\([0-9]\+\).*/\1/" input.txt
sed "s/.*total_count': [a-z]'\([0-9]\+\).*/\1/" input.txt
How could I to filter out the line contains both canvasbench and tracing_mark_write like following sentence shown?
canvasbench-16333 [003] ...1 87432.398788: tracing_mark_write: B|16333|performTraversals\n\
There is no AND operator in grep. But, you can simulate AND using grep -E option.
grep -E 'canvasbench.*tracing_mark_write|tracing_mark_write.*canvasbench' filename
And alternatively, you can use multiple grep command separated by pipe to simulate AND.
grep -E 'canvasbench' filename | grep -E 'tracing_mark_write'
Alternatively you can use sed:
sed -n '/canvasbench/{/tracing_mark_write/p}' input
which tries to match tracing_mark_write on lines matching canvasbench and prints lines matching both.
I have a text file, which contains a date in the form of dd/mm/yyyy (e.g 20/12/2012).
I am trying to use grep to parse the date and show it in the terminal, and it is successful,
until I meet a certain case:
These are my test cases:
grep -E "\d*" returns 20/12/2012
grep -E "\d*/" returns 20/12/2012
grep -E "\d*/\d*" returns 20/12/2012
grep -E "\d*/\d*/" returns nothing
grep -E "\d+" also returns nothing
Could someone explain to me why I get this unexpected behavior?
EDIT: I get the same behavior if I substitute the " (weak quotes) for ' (strong quotes).
The syntax you used (\d) is not recognised by Bash's Extended regex.
Use grep -P instead which uses Perl regex (PCRE). For example:
grep -P "\d+/\d+/\d+" input.txt
grep -P "\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4}" input.txt # more restrictive
Or, to stick with extended regex, use [0-9] in place of \d:
grep -E "[0-9]+/[0-9]+/[0-9]" input.txt
grep -E "[0-9]{2}/[0-9]{2}/[0-9]{4}" input.txt # more restrictive
You could also use -P instead of -E which allows grep to use the PCRE syntax
grep -P "\d+/\d+" file
does work too.
grep and egrep/grep -E don't recognize \d. The reason your first three patterns work is because of the asterisk that makes \d optional. It is actually not found.
Use [0-9] or [[:digit:]].
To help troubleshoot cases like this, the -o flag can be helpful as it shows only the matched portion of the line. With your original expressions:
grep -Eo "\d*" returns nothing - a clue that \d isn't doing what you thought it was.
grep -Eo "\d*/" returns / (twice) - confirmation that \d isn't matching while the slashes are.
As noted by others, the -P flag solves the issue by recognizing "\d", but to clarify Explosion Pills' answer, you could also use -E as follows:
grep -Eo "[[:digit:]]*/[[:digit:]]*/" returns 20/12/
EDIT: Per a comment by #shawn-chin (thanks!), --color can be used similarly to highlight the portions of the line that are matched while still showing the entire line:
grep -E --color "[[:digit:]]*/[[:digit:]]*/" returns 20/12/2012 (can't do color here, but the bold "20/12/" portion would be in color)