Hi All,
I have a file like this, from this file I want to grep only this "package com.att.com;".... even though spaces are present at starting of the line.

i.e., the o/p should ignore these two lines from the file :

[space] [space] asdasdasd package ; ignore this line
[space] asdasdasd adsfkl90-9-0 package c.com; ignore this line also


Here it is the file content :
------------------------
package com.att.com;
[space] package com.att.com;
[double space] package com.att.com;
[space] package com.att.com;
[space] [space] package com.att.com;

package com.att.com;

package com.att.com;
package com.att.com;
package com.att.com;

[space] [space] asdasdasd package ; ignore this line
[space] asdasdasd adsfkl90-9-0 package c.com; ignore this line also

package com.att.com;
------------------------
thanks,
saravana

I must be missing something:
does what you ask? It will find 'package com.att.com;' anywhere in the line of text.

Jim,
But it will miss the lines which are having spaces b4 "package com.att.com;" I need to grep that also.....

I think you just need to add the "beginning of a line" character to only grep the lines that have no spaces before them.

grep '^package com.att.com;' file

Works in Solaris.

Your wording is a little confusing... normally when grep is used as a verb, at least in my experience, it means "get the lines that include". So if I want to find the lines in a dcoument that has the word foo them, I say "I want to grep for foo"

So... do you want to grep for the lines w/ spaces before the words or only those without spaces before the words?

Do include in the output the lines w/ spaces before, use the first example provided by Jim. If you want to exclude the lines w/ spaces before the text from your output, use the one I provided.

Cheers.

I want to grep for the lines w/ spaces before the words. Can you give me the grep command for this?

You need to be ultra-specific in asking for what you want.