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The table below describes the options for the grep command. Each option except the -w option can be used with the egrep and fgrep commands. The syntax for the grep command is: grep options pattern filenames The options that you use with the grep command can modify your search. This saves time and generally makes the expressions easier to read. Using the grep command does not change le content.
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This means that it escapes these special characters by default. Extended Grep: Egrep or grep -EĮgrep was created to provide extended support for meta-characters. Notice how you have to escape the parenthesis? This is much easier to look at and understand with extended regex. This is what I can use: :~$ grep 't\(a\|e\)st' test.txt Suppose I want to search for either tast or test. Using grep requires escaping meta-characters to generate the expected behavior. This is the standard version of grep designed for searching patterns using basic regular expressions. I have created a short text file to demonstrate the differences between these grep variants. Understanding the difference between grep, egrep and fgrep with example fgrep is equivalent to grep -F command and it uses a fixed string for search and hence it performs a faster search.
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If there are several files with the matching pattern, it also displays the file names for each line. It treats the pattern as an extended regular expression and prints out the lines that match the pattern. The e in egrep stands for extended and the f in fgrep stands for fixed. egrep is a pattern searching command which belongs to the family of grep functions. What is egrep and fgrep? What is the difference between grep, egrep and fgrep? In this tutorial, I'll discuss these grep variants explaining the difference and similarities. It may happen that you may come across terms like egrep and fgrep in some internet forum discussion and wonder what are these commands and whether they are related to grep. I believe you are already familiar with the grep command.