UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm trying to use grep to search for a specific string. Given the following strings:

.A BAGM4 0101 Z DH1300/PPD T/SF T/SD 10
.A CLUM4 0101 Z DH1300/PP T/SF T/SD 9
.A MQT 0101 Z DH1200/PPK T/SFK 2.0/SD 15

I only want to get the string that contains PPD. If I do the command:

grep PPD ./filename

I get all lines that contain PP. So in this case I would get all three lines. How can I modify grep to get only the line that contains PPD? Now bear in mind the "real" file i'm looking through contains lots of different lines, not just three. Also the information within the lines changes on a daily basis, the only thing that doesn't change is the second field, and the letters. I tried the "-x" option, that doesn't work because I'm not including the full field that contains PPD. So i need something that explicity finds PPD within a line. Thanks in advance.

How did your grep manage to pick up all the lines that contain PP ? Your grep string works just fine.

See this

Code:

[/tmp]$ echo ".A BAGM4 0101 Z DH1300/PPD T/SF T/SD 10
.A CLUM4 0101 Z DH1300/PP T/SF T/SD 9
.A MQT 0101 Z DH1200/PPK T/SFK 2.0/SD 15" | grep PPD
.A BAGM4 0101 Z DH1300/PPD T/SF T/SD 10

In any case, try this grep statement

Code:

grep -F PPD

I did leave out one detail, though I don't think it matters. Going back to my previous example:

.A BAGM4 0101 Z DH1300/PPD T/SF T/SD 10
.A CLUM4 0101 Z DH1300/PP T/SF T/SD 9
.A MQT 0101 Z DH1200/PPK T/SFK 2.0/SD 15

I'm first searching for the id, which in this case appears in the second field. So i'm searching for let's say BAGM4 then to further narrow it down I pipe that to grep. And search for PP. PPD works fine, but when I look for PP I get everything.

Code:

grep BAGM4 ./filename | grep PP

Using "-F didn't seem to work, i tried

Code:

grep BAGM4 ./filename | grep -F PP

What are you looking for ? PP or PPD ?

sorry about the confusion. I'm looking for PP.

All the lines in your sample contain PP. Hence grep will pick up all lines containing PP.

What is the other constraint that you have ?

There in lies the problem, there isn't any other constraint. All the information within each line changes alot so i really can't use any more specific criteria. The one thing going for me is that PP and PPD will never appear on the same line together. I was hoping grep had the ability to just pull out PP but i don't think it does. If you have any other suggestions i'm open to them. thanks