Using grep to find strings of certain lengths?

crabtruck · #1 (**permalink**) 11-02-2003

I am trying to use grep to find strings of certain lengths that all start with the same letter. Is this possible?

Ygor · #2 (**permalink**) 11-03-2003

If your grep has the -w option,

Code:

grep -w 's...' file

oombera · #3 (**permalink**) 11-03-2003

You could use awk, unless you're impartial to grep for some reason:

awk '$0~"^s" && length($0)==12' yourFile

In the example, you're searching for lines starting with the letter "s" with a length of 12.

Simerian · #4 (**permalink**) 11-04-2003

egrep will also work with a regexp that matches a specific length (i.e. [A-Za-z]{12,12})

google · #5 (**permalink**) 11-04-2003

To Simerians point, his regexp accounts for files that start with both upper case and lower case letters. Adding the switch "-i" to the other grep examples will allow you to ignore case.

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