weird behavior of grep -P

pankai · #1 (**permalink**) 12-20-2007

I met a problem in using grep -P.

There is a text file, temp.txt, whose content is:
dddd
abc

I ran the command:

grep -P "\s*abc" temp.txt

The result I expected is:
abc

But, the actual result is:
dddd
abc

Could anyone tell me what is wrong?

Thanks.

DeepakS · #2 (**permalink**) 12-20-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by pankai

I met a problem in using grep -P.

There is a text file, temp.txt, whose content is:
dddd
abc

I ran the command:

grep -P "\s*abc" temp.txt

The result I expected is:
abc

But, the actual result is:
dddd
abc

Could anyone tell me what is wrong?

Thanks.

\s in perl includes \n so the pattern matches dddd\nabc

Depending on your requirements you could do a "^\s*abc" or "\w*abc"

pankai · #3 (**permalink**) 12-20-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeepakS

\s in perl includes \n so the pattern matches dddd\nabc

Depending on your requirements you could do a "^\s*abc" or "\w*abc"

Got it. Thanks.

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