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# 1  
Old 08-23-2010
grep!
guys if I have a load of text files which contain many lines with this one in particular in there somwhere:

cheese [XYZ] jam, bread [XYZ]

where [XYZ] is a random string, how would I do a grep for this?

I tried:

grep "cheese * jam, bread *" file.txt but this doesn't work, whats the search pattern i need to put into grep?
# 2  
Old 08-23-2010
Try:
Code:
grep 'cheese.*jam.*bread'

# 3  
Old 08-23-2010
Data
doesn't seem to work,

the line I'm trying to return is:

cheese, bread [XYZ_JIM], spoon [CreamCake],

the XYZ part is a totally random string

so it's gzgrep 'cheese, bread ??? JIM], spoon [CreamCake]' file???

(sorry it's actually gzgrep not grep)
# 4  
Old 08-23-2010
This is because grep does not use shell-style wildcards, it uses regular expressions. The . means "match any character", and the * means "match one or more of the previous character". So .* means "match one or more of anything".
# 5  
Old 08-23-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by rich@ardz
doesn't seem to work,

the line I'm trying to return is:

cheese, bread [XYZ_JIM], spoon [CreamCake],

the XYZ part is a totally random string

so it's gzgrep 'cheese, bread ??? JIM], spoon [CreamCake]' file???

(sorry it's actually gzgrep not grep)
Perhaps you could use gzegrep?

i.e. like:

Code:
$ gzegrep "cheese|bread|jam" file.txt

Although to me, it's not really clear which bit you are trying to "grep" for, and really what [XYZ] has to do with any of it.
# 6  
Old 08-23-2010
[edit] crosspost.

You asked for "cheese...jam...bread", not "cheese....bread....spoon" so of course it will not match since it cannot find 'jam' nor 'bread' in the order it expects. Alter the pattern "cheese.*jam.*bread" to "cheese.*bread.*spoon"
# 7  
Old 08-26-2010
If comma is essentially there after your random string then,
Code:
grep 'cheese, bread [^,]*, spoon [^,],'

or, if that random string it alphanumeric only,
Code:
grep 'cheese, bread [a-zA-Z0-9]*, spoon [a-zA-Z0-9]*,'

Last edited by Franklin52; 08-26-2010 at 12:57 PM.. Reason: please use code tags, thank you
 
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