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| help | unix | grep - Can I use grep to return a string with exactly n matches?

 
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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers | help | unix | grep - Can I use grep to return a string with exactly n matches?
# 8  
Old 10-13-2009
Hey, thanks that was exactly what I was looking for. I'm just trying to work through the logic for the grep part:

^[^x]* = match characters that aren't 'x' at the beginning of a line, zero or more times.
x = followed by an 'x'
[^x]* = followed by characters that aren't 'x', zero or more times
x = followed by an 'x'
[^x]*$ = followed by characters that aren't 'x' till end of the line, zero or more times

And I think I got it.

I expaneded it a bit for a bit of flexibility:

Code:
ls -aLl \bin | grep "^\([^x]*x\)\{n\}[^x]*$"

Which allows you to specify n to the number of exact matches.
Last edited by MykC; 10-13-2009 at 03:21 PM..
 
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LEARN ABOUT X11R4

zgrep

ZGREP(1)                                                      General Commands Manual                                                     ZGREP(1)

NAME

       zgrep - search possibly compressed files for a regular expression

SYNOPSIS

       zgrep [ grep_options ] [ -e ] pattern filename...

DESCRIPTION

       Zgrep  invokes  grep  on  compressed  or  gzipped  files.   These  grep  options  will  cause  zgrep  to  terminate  with  an  error  code:
       (-[drRzZ]|--di*|--exc*|--inc*|--rec*|--nu*).  All other options specified are passed directly to grep.  If no file is specified,  then  the
       standard input is decompressed if necessary and fed to grep.  Otherwise the given files are uncompressed if necessary and fed to grep.

       If the GREP environment variable is set, zgrep uses it as the grep program to be invoked.

EXIT CODE

       2 - An option that is not supported was specified.

AUTHOR

       Charles Levert (charles@comm.polymtl.ca)

SEE ALSO

       grep(1), gzexe(1), gzip(1), zdiff(1), zforce(1), zmore(1), znew(1)

                                                                                                                                          ZGREP(1)