UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

My bash doesn't have grep -p.. I often find myself wanting to search a section of a man page for areas dealing with a specific property or parameter... For instance wanting to read everything in the man pages for bash that deal with Parameter Expansion..

Is there a way to do this with grep if you don't have the -p option?

Yes, I know awk can do it.. awk can do everything!
and yes, I know I can download a different grep binary...

I was curious of a way to do it with my grep.. for instance using regex to specify delimiters.
if not please let me know the simplest other solution..

Your bash doesn't have grep period

The -p option of grep is an AIX thing (at least I think only an AIX thing!). We had a similar "problem" when using Linux servers. We missed the -p option too

Still, something like this did the trick:

Code:

sed -e '/./{H;$!d;}' -e 'x;/'paragraph_name'/!d;' file

grep is not a internal command so its not your bash that has/has not -p option for grep...
To know more about your grep type:

Code:

what <full path to>/grep

Yes, I understand, I should have said my OS doesn't have the grep with the -p option.. I know it's not a shell builtin like IF.. I'll try your suggestion.