UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi all

I am new to egrep can someone please explain me what does the below Statement do

Code:

 egrep -v "^missing sales|^\[Sales_Update"

Thanks in advance
Sri

Moderator's Comments:

Please use next time code tags for your code and data

Code:

$ egrep -v "^missing sales|^\[Sales_Update" test.txt                                                                                               
abcd
efghg

$ cat test.txt
missing sales
[Sales_Update
abcd
efghg

egrep => Extended grep, same as grep -E. Check man grep to see what extra features are supported by egrep.
-v => This switch will enable grep to print all those lines that doesn't match the pattern.
"^missing sales|^\[Sales_Update" => If string starts with "missing sales" or "[Sales_Update"

To summarise: If any line from input file (or stdin) starts with "missing sales" or "[Sales_Update", skip those lines and print the rest.

Hi

What is the use of '/' then in other words what will happen if we dont give that

Sri

Reqular expressions use the square brackets to indicate a character range, the backslash \ is used to escape the following character, thus preventing the regex engine from interpreting it as the beginning of a range.

If it is not included the grep will fail with an error similar to grep: Unmatched [ or [^.