UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All !

As a dummy, I try to search for multiple string of characters contained in 2 types of list.
Not clear? No it's not.

Example:
I have a tab-delimited file called "inventory" with 2 columns that looks like that:

Code:

#ref  #year,color
xrt3   2000,blue
gf5    2000,red,green,yellow
tyr6   2001,purple,pink
gh3   2003,brown
euo4  2005,black,grey

A file "list1.tab" contains:

Code:

#years
2000
2003
2005

Another file "list2.tab" contains:

Code:

#colours
red
black

Using egrep, I would like to extract the lines from the file "inventory" that contain both ONE of the terms from "list1" AND one of the term from "list2".

In a way I should obtain only:

Code:

gf5  2000,red,green,yellow
euo4  2005,black,grey

Here it is just an example.
In reality my file "inventory" contains about 100,000 lines, the list1.tab and list2.tab about 100 terms each.

Is it possible to use egrep to write something with this meaning:
egrep '(<one of the term from list1>)*(<one of the term from list2>)'

I don't really care of the column "ref".

I hope I have been clear enough !
I can definitely give more explanation if needed.

Thanks in advance guys !!!

Not so efficient. But works.

Code:

#! /bin/bash

while read year
do
    [[ $year =~ /^#/ ]] && continue
    while read color
    do
        [[ $color =~ /^#/ ]] && continue
        grep "$year.*$color" inventory
    done < list2.tab
done < list1.tab

Try:

Code:

grep -wf list1.tab inventory | grep -wf list2.tab

Thanks a lot guys for your help !

Thanks Scrutinizer, it works perfectly !!!

Thanks balajesuri, it works but the second method is definitely easier !

---------- Post updated at 08:09 PM ---------- Previous update was at 07:16 PM ----------

I am wondering...

Once the lines containing the matching terms from list1.tab and list2.tab have been extracted, would it be possible to print the corresponding ref. AND only the matching terms (separated by a pipe, a coma, a space, or whatever) instead of the whole line?
Or if you prefer, a way to discard everything except the matching terms from the 2 lists and the corresponding ref?

Like that:

Code:

gf5|2000|red
euo4|2005|black

I tried the option -o in any possible way, but it doesn't work.

I don't think you can do it that way. You'd probably need to use Unix' Swiss Army Knife:

Code:

awk ' f==1{A[$1]} 
      f==2{B[$1]} 
      f==3{if($2 in A) for(i=3;i<=NF;i++) if($i in B)print $1,$2,$i}
    ' FS='[ \t,]*' OFS=\| f=1 list1.tab f=2 list2.tab f=3 inventory