UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Yes, you got it. The I reason for posting that reply was to encourage you to understand exactly what the regular expression means, which you obviously have done.

Thanks very much for encouraging my understanding - can you tell me if I have to enclose things in quotes to keep them as a string? This may seem very basic to you but I really hardly know anything!

if I use

"bad word" will that let me identify anything with "bad word" in it but if I leave it as bad word without the quotes, it would match anything with b or a or d or space or w or o or r. I am using regular expressions in a spam filter and i guess this is how the regular expression works but I don't really know. The spam filter manual says you can use regular expressions but doesn't give any guidance on syntax. Can you also recommend a good reference for regular expressions for beginners.

Thanks again for all your help,

Mair

grep "bad word" file1 file2 file3
Search for the phrase "bad word" in the files named "file1", "file2", and "file3".

grep bad word file1 file2 file3
Search for the word "bad" in the files named "word", "file1", "file2", and "file3".

I am using a spam filter which has drop downs which let you choose what part of the e-mail you want to examine and then either 'matches' or 'contains' and then a 'pattern'. In the 'pattern' you can use regular expressions so I don't have to key in grep or any file names. The way this seems to work is that if I put in the pattern say

abc

and tell it to reject all e-mails where the subject line contains this pattern, it will reject any subject line with a or b or c in it.

I am guessing (and i won't be able to try it out till monday) that if i put in

"abc"

it will reject e-mails with abc all together in the subject line... sorry this is probably not what this forum is all about but you are the only place i have found where it seems i can get some real help. Looking forward to trying it all out on Monday and will let you know how it goes.

You may not need quotes then. In that case "abc" might reject subject lines with abc as you suggest. Or it may reject lines with "abc" on the subject line. Try it both ways.