BOSS-Linux/C3/The-grep-command/English

From Script | Spoken-Tutorial
Jump to: navigation, search

Title of script: The grep command

Author : Sachin Patil and Anirban

Keywords:Search,Pattern,regular expressions,extended regular expression


Visual Cue Narration
Display Slide 1 Welcome to the spoken tutorial on grep command
Display Slide 2 In this tutorial we will learn grep command.

We will do this with the help of some examples.

Display Slide 3 To record this tutorial, I am using
  • Linux Operating System and
  • GNU BASH version 4.2.24

Please note, GNU bash version 4 or above is recommended to practice this tutorial.

Display Slide 4 As prerequisites

You should know basics of Linux terminal

For relevant tutorials, please visit our website which is as shown.

First let us know about regular expressions.
  • Regular expressions are pattern matching techniques.
  • When we have to find out whether a pattern exist in a line, paragraph or a file.

For ex. If you want to search a phone number in the telephone directory

Or

To find a keyword in a paragraph or a line, we use grep command. Let us move on to grep.

Display Slide 5 grep searches for one or more patterns in one or more line, paragraph or a file.


If filename is not mentioned, grep search for the patterns in the standard input.


If filename is missing, grep searches for the patterns in the standard input.

Open

grepdemo.txt” [enter]

I will demonstrate usage of grep using a demo file called grepdemo.txt


Let us see the content of the file.

This is a file that has 13 entries.


Each entry has 6 fields roll number, name, stream, marks, and stipend amount.

The fields are separated by a bar, which is called a delimiter.
At the prompt type

grep “computers” grepdemo.txt [enter]


At the prompt, type:


cat grepdemo.txt

Let us see how grep works.


Say we want to use grep command, to see who are the students in the computers stream.

For this we have to open the terminal.

So press CTRL + ALT and T keys simultaneously on your keyboard.

Now type on the terminal:


grep space (within double quotes) computers (after the double quotes) space grepdemo .txt.Press Enter

This would enlist those entries where stream is computers.
Now compare the result with the original file.
Come back to our text editor.

We see that the entry for Zubin is not enlisted.

Highlight Why this is so?

This is because grep searched for the pattern “computers” with small c


While for Zubin, the stream is “Computers” with a capital C.

At the prompt type

grep -i “computers” grepdemo.txt” [enter]

The pattern matching is case sensitive.

To make it case insensitive, we need to use the minus i option with grep.Come back to our terminal

Type:

grep space (minus) i space (within double quotes) “computers” after the double quotes space grepdemo.txt

Press Enter.

This will now enlist all the four entries.
At the prompt type

grep -iv “pass” grepdemo.txt” [enter]

So we saw, grep enlists only those lines of files that match a given pattern.
We may do the reverse.

It is possible to make grep enlist only those lines that do not match the pattern.

For that we have the minus v option.
Say, we want to enlist those entries of students who have not passed.
At the prompt type

grep -iv “pass” grepdemo.txt > notpass.txt” [enter]


We can also store this result in another file


For this type:


grep space minus iv space within double quotes pass after the double quotes space grepdemo.txt space greater than sign space notpass.txt

Press Enter.

At the prompt type

“cat notpass.txt”

To see the content of file, type:


cat space notpass.txt

Press Enter.

The output is displayed.

At the prompt type

grep -i “fail” grepdemo.txt” [enter]

Now at the prompt type:

grep space minus i space within double quotes fail after the double quotes space grepdemo.txt

and Press Enter.

This is different.


This will include those students who are failed but their result is incomplete.

At the prompt type

grep -in “fail” grepdemo.txt” [enter]

If we want to see the line number in the file at which the enlisted entries are, we have the minus n option
Let us clear the prompt. Now type

"grep space -in space within double quote "fail" after the double quotes space grepdemo.txt

Press Enter.

The line number is displayed.

At the prompt type

grep -i “ankit saraf” grepdemo.txt” [enter]

The patterns so far have been of single word.

We may have multiword patterns as well.


But the entire pattern must be within quotes.

So type:


grep space minus i space within double quotes ankit space saraf after the double quotes space grepdemo.txt


Press Enter.

We see that Ankit Saraf's record is displayed.

At the prompt type

grep -i “fail” grepdemo.txt notpass.txt” [enter]

We can also find patterns in multiple files.For this


Type:


grep space minus i space within double quotes fail after the double quotes space grepdemo.txt space notpass.txt


Press Enter.

The output is displayed.

With multiple files, grep will write the name of the file in which the entry was found.

grepdemo.txt notpass.txt

Highlight the relevant records. These are the records from notpass.txt file and these are the records from grepdemo.txt file.
At the prompt type

grep -c “Fail” grepdemo.txt” [enter]

Suppose we may only want to know the number of matches or count .

For that, we have the minus c option


So Type:

grep space minus c space within double quotes Fail with a capital F after the space grepdemo.txt

Press Enter.


This will give us the count of number of lines matched.

This brings us to the end of this tutorial.

Let us summarize.

Display Slide 6

Summary

In this tutorial we learnt,
  • To see the content of a file
    • eg. cat filename
  • To list the entries of a particular stream
    • eg. grep “computers” grepdemo.txt
  • To ignore cases
    • eg. grep -i “computers” grepdemo.txt
  • Lines that do not match the pattern
    • eg. grep -iv “pass” grepdemo.txt
  • To list the line numbers with the entries
    • eg. grep -in “fail” grepdemo.txt
  • To store the result in another file
    • eg. grep -iv “pass” grepdemo.txt > notpass.txt
  • To know the count
    • eg. grep -c “Fail” grepdemo.txt
Display Slide 7 As an assignment,

Explore some other commands like -E, + and ?

Display Slide 8

Acknowledgement Slide

Watch the video available at the link shown below.

It summarises the Spoken Tutorial project.

If you do not have good bandwidth, you can download and watch it.

Display Slide 9

Spoken Tutorial Workshops

The Spoken Tutorial Project Team
  • Conducts workshops using spoken tutorials
  • Gives certificates to those who pass an online test

For more details, please write to

contact@spoken-tutorial.org

Display Slide 10

Acknowledgement

Spoken Tutorial Project is a part of the Talk to a Teacher project

It is supported by the National Mission on Education through ICT, MHRD, Government of India

More information on this Mission is available at: http://spoken-tutorial.org\NMEICT-Intro

This is Ashwini Patil from IIT Bombay signning off. Thank you for joining.

Contributors and Content Editors

PoojaMoolya