tldr/pages/common/grep.md

grep

Matches patterns in input text. Supports simple patterns and regular expressions.

• Search for an exact string:

grep {{search_string}} {{path/to/file}}

• Search in case-insensitive mode:

grep -i {{search_string}} {{path/to/file}}

• Search recursively (ignoring non-text files) in current directory for an exact string:

grep -rI {{search_string}} .

• Use extended regular expressions (supporting ?, +, {}, () and |):

grep -E {{^regex$}} {{path/to/file}}

• Print 3 lines of context around each match:

grep -C 3 {{search_string}} {{path/to/file}}

• Print the count of matches instead of the matching text:

grep -c {{search_string}} {{path/to/file}}

• Print line number for each match:

grep -n {{search_string}} {{path/to/file}}

• Print file names with matches:

grep -l {{search_string}} {{path/to/file}}

• Use the standard input instead of a file:

cat {{path/to/file}} | grep {{search_string}}

• Invert match for excluding specific strings:

grep -v {{search_string}}