Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Name

egrep

Synopsis

    egrep [options] [regexp] [files]

Search one or more files for lines that match a regular expression regexp. egrep doesn’t support the metacharacters \(, \), \ n, \<, \>, but does support the other metacharacters, as well as the extended set +, ?, |, and (). Remember to enclose these characters in quotes. Regular expressions are described in Chapter 7. Exit status is 0 if any lines match, 1 if not, and 2 for errors. See also grep and fgrep.

Solaris /usr/bin/egrep does not support \{, or \}. Mac OS X and GNU/Linux use GNU egrep.

Common Options

-c, --count

Print only a count of matched lines.

-eregexp, --regexp=regexp

Use this if regexp begins with -.

-ffile, --file=file

Take expression from file. Multiple expressions may be provided, one per line, in which case any of them may match.

-i, --ignore-case

Ignore uppercase and lowercase distinctions.

-h, --no-filename

Do not print the names of matching files, just the matched lines.

-l, --files-with-matches

List filenames but not matched lines.

-n, --line-number

Print lines and their line numbers.

-s, --no-messages

Silent mode: print only error messages, and return the exit status.

-v --invert-match

Print all lines that don’t match regexp.

-x, --line-regexp

Select only those matches that exactly match the whole line. (Only /usr/xpg4/bin/egrep on Solaris, not /usr/bin/egrep.)

GNU grep, egrep, and fgrep Options

-a, --text

Treat a binary file as text. Same as --binary-files=text.

-Acount, --after-context=count

Print count lines of trailing context. ...