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grep lines having special characters

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# 1  
Old 08-02-2012
grep lines having special characters
Hi,

I have a file which has numerous lines and some of the lines having special characters in it. i want to grep the lines which are having special characters.

say,

one line looks like - %*()$#@"", | acbd
antoher line looks like ***##^%! | efcg

so these kind of lines are present in my file.
How to grep these lines. The number of special characters may be differenct from one line to another line and the pattern also not same.

Please suggest.
# 2  
Old 08-02-2012
How about you specify what you don't want to grep for, and find the opposite? grep '[^a-zA-Z0-9 \t]' filename should find any characters which aren't alphanumeric or whitespace.
# 3  
Old 08-02-2012
Code:
grep '[[:punct:]]' trtest.txt

Moderator's Comments:
Mod Comment Code tags for code please.


---------- Post updated at 03:21 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:18 PM ----------

grep '[[:punct:]]' <filename>
# 4  
Old 08-02-2012
Thanks guys for reply.

Now i also need to grep a string which has special characters. when i use normal grep it is not working. Please suggest.

say my file looks like,

/u/anaraya8/F200.354/file




$ more file
NULL
!@#$%^&*()+?,
$ echo $VAL
!@#$%^&*()+?,
$ grep "$VAL" file
$

I am assiging the sting to a variable and try to grep it. it is not returning. Please suggest.
# 5  
Old 08-02-2012
Oh. If you want to grep for an exact string, then:

Code:
grep -F '!@#$%' filename

This User Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
rbalaj16
# 6  
Old 08-03-2012
thanks. it worked fine...
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