How to make grep just a match if the whole string matches?

Question

I have:

$ cat a.tmp ABB.log ABB.log.122 ABB.log.123 

I wanted to find an exact match for ABB.log.

But when I did

 $ grep -w ABB.log a.tmp ABB.log ABB.log.122 ABB.log.123 

he displays them all.

Can I get what I wanted using grep?

Answer 1

Just specify regexp bindings.

 grep '^ABB\.log$' a.tmp 

Answer 2

 grep -Fx ABB.log a.tmp 

On the grep man page:

-F, --fixed-strings
Interpret PATTERN as a (list) of fixed strings
-x, -line-regexp
Select only matches that exactly match the entire string.

Answer 3

Here is what I do, although using anchors is the best way:

 grep -w "ABB.log " a.tmp 

Answer 4

similar to awk

  awk '/^ABB\.log$/' file 

Answer 5

Most suggestions will fail if there is only one leading or trailing space, which matters if the file is edited manually. This would make him less susceptible in this case:

 grep '^[[:blank:]]*ABB\.log[[:blank:]]*$' a.tmp 

A simple while-read loop in the shell will do this implicitly:

 while read file do case $file in (ABB.log) printf "%s\n" "$file" esac done < a.tmp 

Answer 6

I intend to add further explanation regarding the OP attempts and other answers.

You can use John Kugelmans solution like this:

 grep -x "ABB\.log" a.tmp 

quoting the line and avoiding the period ( . ), the -F flag is no longer needed.

You need to avoid . (period) (because it matches any character (not only . ) if not escaped) or use the -F flag with grep. The -F flag makes it a fixed string (not a regular expression).

If you don't quote the line, you may need a double backslash to escape the dot ( . ):

 grep -x ABB\\.log a.tmp 

---

Test:

 $ echo "ABBElog"|grep -x ABB.log ABBElog #matched !!! $ echo "ABBElog"|grep -x "ABB\.log" #returns empty string, no match 

---

Note:

• -x forces the entire line.
• Answers using unshielded . without the -F flag erroneous.
• You can avoid the -x switch by wrapping the pattern string with ^ and $ . In this case, make sure that you do not use -F , but avoid . , because -F will interfere with the interpretation of the ^ and $ regular expressions.

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EDIT: (Adding further explanation regarding @hakre):

If you want to combine a line starting with - then you should use -- with grep. Everything that follows -- will be taken as an input (not an option).

Example:

 echo -f |grep -- "-f" # where grep "-f" will show error echo -f |grep -F -- "-f" # whre grep -F "-f" will show error grep "pat" -- "-file" # grep "pat" "-file" won't work. -file is the filename 

Answer 7

This worked for me when I try to do something like this:

 grep -F ABB.log a.tmp 

Answer 8

Works for me :

 grep "\bsearch_word\b" text_file > output.txt 

\b points / sets bounds.

Seems to work pretty fast

Answer 9

  $ cat venky ABB.log ABB.log.122 ABB.log.123 $ cat venky | grep "ABB.log" | grep -v "ABB.log\." ABB.log $ $ cat venky | grep "ABB.log.122" | grep -v "ABB.log.122\." ABB.log.122 $ 

Answer 10

This is with HPUX, if the contents of the files have a space between words, use this:

egrep "[[:space:]]ABC\.log[[:space:]]" a.tmp

Answer 11

I need this function, but I also wanted to make sure that I did not return prefixed strings before ABB.log:

• ABB.log
• ABB.log.122
• ABB.log.123
• 123ABB.log

 grep "\WABB.log$" -w a.tmp 

Answer 12

I would prefer:

 str="ABB.log"; grep -E "^${str}$" a.tmp 

amuses