UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

New to this forum. Nice forum and very helpful.

Quick question. I'm trying to grep a list of numbers from single digit to 3-digit. For example, I have a pool of numbers that contain two specific numbers, 17 and 177. I would like to grep for 17 but not get 177. When using grep, I also get 177 unless I grep for "17 ", adding an additional space. Is there a way I can exclude that extra 7 but also include it if I grep for the actual number 177? Would this be what delimiters are?

Thanks
dj

If those numbers are within a file, 1 number on each line:

grep "^[0-9][0-9]$" file

Thanks for the response. I may be missing your explanation. How about this:

Here's a file with only two lines:

This line has the number 17 in it. I would like to grep only it.
This line has the number 177 in it. I would like to exclude it.

Here's the command I'm using:
grep "17" <filename>

This returns both line one and two, when I'm only wanting line one. Is this possible?
Sorry if you answered this and I'm simply not getting it.

Thanks so much.
dj

Code:

grep "[^0-9]17[^0-9]" file

or

Code:

grep -w "17" file

Excellent. This worked. Thanks!!