UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How do you grep cells that contain a specific string. I tried grep but it greps the whole line and not just the cells. Thanks!

What's the difference? If it's in the line, wouldn't it be in a cell too?

Or do you mean it has to take an entire cell? That's what I'll guess until you clarify.

As usual, the awk programming language can be easily used for your question. This should print only lines where a cell matches the given regular expression. The ^ and $ in REGEX have slightly different meanings here -- instead of 'beginning of the line' and 'end of the line', they match the beginning and end of the cell.

Code:

awk -v REGEX="^string$" '{ P=0; for(N=1; (!P)&&(N<=NF); N++) if($N  ~ REGEX) P=1 } P' filename

For some reason that line of code does not work. I meant grepping the entire cell given a string that is included in the line such as:

Input:
string 12
forum 25
star 35
pages 45
burst 65

If the string is "st", the resulting output would be:

string
star
burst

Please include example input and output sooner then so we spend less time guessing what you want.

Try this:

Code:

awk -v REGEX="st" '{ for(N=1; N<=NF; N++) if($N ~ REGEX) print $N }' filename

Another way would be to just split columns into rows. Then you really could do grep.

Code:

tr -s ' ' '\n' < inputfile | grep 'regex'

Hi,

If you want to grep only for a particular string 'string' only, you can try:

Code:

cat <file_name> | grep -v .string | grep -v string.

As an example:
Here I need top display exclusively the word 'at'

Code:

 
#cat > ftest
sat
batter
latex
hat
ate
heater
at
 
#more ftest | grep -v .at | grep -v at.
at

I worked this out... please tell if it sufficed your need.
Cheer!