UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I need to find records with a search string from a file. Search strings are provided in a file.

For eg. search_String.txt file is like below
chicago
mexico
newark
sanhose

and the file from where the records need to be fetched is given below

src_file:
xxx|chicago|12/31/2011|abc@xyz.com|installed
yyy|sanhose|12/30/2011|yyy@xyz.com|deleted
zzz|newark|11/30/2011|zzz@xyz.com|installed
ccc|denver|12/31/2011|ccc@xyz.com|installed


I have written a code as below using grep

#!/usr/bin/ksh
LIST=search_String.txt

while read line
do
grep ${line} src_file >> OUTPUT.TXT
done < ${LIST}

exit 0

This code works. But the problem am facing is my src_file is a very huge file having around 23 million records and I need to search for 1200 strings from this src_file and get the records from src_file.
Given this situation my code runs for hours.

Could anyone of you help me to understand if there is a better way for this search?

Thanks

If you have GNU grep (or any POSIX one) you can just do:

Code:

grep -f search_String.txt src_file > OUTPUT.TXT