Hi All,
I have a text / log file which contains strings like meta777, 77, meta, 777. Now I want to write a script which can detect a string 'meta#777' in a text file & number of occurence of 'meta', number of #, number 7, 77, 777.
I'm using grep -e '77' filename but no luck. It is returning string with 777 also. How to get the exact string. Please help me. Thanks in Advance.

Below are some lines from that file-

04/05/2012 7:21 PM    Attempting to Connect to DB: (local)
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    DB Connection Established: (local)
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    Getting Database Lists meta#7
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    -----------------------------------------------------
04/05/2012 7:21 PM meta#777                Beginning Script Processing
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    -----------------------------------------------------
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    Clinical DB: Medicos
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    IDwf DB: IDXwf
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    Impact DB: Impact: meta#777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    General DB: ASCharge, meta#777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    -----------------------------------------------------
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    Beginning Script Processing 777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    IDXwf - Processing: 002-TWMenus-SP.sql ............. meta#77
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    IDf - Processing: 100-Base.sql
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    IDXwf - Processing: 204 - PHB_10_0_Upgrade.sql
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    IDXwf - Processing: 910-BuildMenus.sql
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    IDXwf - Processing: dbo.FileWF.prc
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    Successfully Finished Script Processing meta#777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    -----------------------------------------------------
04/05/2012 77:21 PM          meta#777End Script Processing 77
04/05/2012 777:21 PM    -----------------------------------------------------meta#777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    Attempting to Connect to DB: (local)meta
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    DB Connection Established: (local)meta#777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    Getting Database Lists 777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM    -----------------------------------------------------
meta#777

Hi,

Try this one,

sed -n '/meta#/p;s/.*\(meta#[7][7]*\).*/\1/g' file

Thanks Rangarasan for the help. I tried with the solution that you provided. But I got all the matching lines, -

$ sed -n '/meta#/p;s/.*\(meta#[7][7]*\).*/\1/g' expression.txt
04/05/2012 7:21 PM      Getting Database Lists meta#7
04/05/2012 7:21 PM meta#777                 Beginning Script Processing
04/05/2012 7:21 PM      Impact DB: Impact: meta#777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM      General DB: ASCharge, meta#777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM      IDXwf - Processing: 002-TWMenus-SP.sql ............. meta#77
04/05/2012 7:21 PM      Successfully Finished Script Processing meta#777
04/05/2012 77:21 PM           meta#777End Script Processing 77
04/05/2012 777:21 PM    -----------------------------------------------------meta#777
04/05/2012 7:21 PM      DB Connection Established: (local)meta#777
meta#777
meta#777  this is test file meta#777

# awk 'BEGIN{x="meta#";s=7}{if($0~x){if($0~x s"$")sc++;if($0~x s s"$")ssc++;if($0~x s s s"$")sssc++}}
END{print x " counts -> " sc"(" x s")",ssc"(" x s s")",sssc"(" x s s s")"}' infile
meta# counts -> 1(meta#7) 1(meta#77) 6(meta#777)

Thanks Ygemici, it worked like magic .
I'm just trying to understand the code. Could you please explain me what
if($0~x){if($0~x s"$") actually does .
Thanks.

Can't we use "grep -w" ? as per my experience 10 examples of grep command in UNIX and Linux it matches whole word , so my understanding is that it should match exact word like "77" and not "777" , also we can use wc -l to count lines , this is what I did as quick test
$ cat abc
77
7777
777
77777

$ grep -w 77 abc | wc -l
1

$ grep -w 777 abc | wc -l
1