LOOK(1) 						    BSD General Commands Manual 						   LOOK(1)

NAME

     look -- display lines beginning with a given string

SYNOPSIS

     look [-dfa] [-t termchar] string [file]

DESCRIPTION

     The look utility displays any lines in file which contain string as a prefix.  As look performs a binary search, the lines in file must be
     sorted (where sort(1) got the same options -d and/or -f that look is invoked with).

     If file is not specified, the file /usr/share/dict/words is used, only alphanumeric characters are compared and the case of alphabetic char-
     acters is ignored.

     Options:

     -d      Dictionary character set and order, i.e. only alphanumeric characters are compared. (On by default if no file specified).

     -f      Ignore the case of alphabetic characters. (On by default if no file specified).

     -a      Use the alternate dictionary /usr/share/dict/web2

     -t      Specify a string termination character, i.e. only the characters in string up to and including the first occurrence of termchar are
	     compared.

     The look utility exits 0 if one or more lines were found and displayed, 1 if no lines were found, and >1 if an error occurred.

FILES

     /usr/share/dict/words  the dictionary
     /usr/share/dict/web2   the alternate dictionary

SEE ALSO

     grep(1), sort(1)

COMPATIBILITY

     The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters participated in comparisons when the -d option was specified.  This was incor-
     rect and the current man page matches the historic implementation.

HISTORY

     Look appeared in Version 7 AT&T Unix.

AVAILABILITY

     The look command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.

BSD
								   June 14, 1993							       BSD