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PCREGREP(1) PCREGREP(1)
NAME
pcregrep - a grep with Perl-compatible regular expressions.
SYNOPSIS
pcregrep [-Vcfhilnrsuvx] [long options] [pattern] [file1 file2 ...]
DESCRIPTION
pcregrep searches files for character patterns, in the same way as
other grep commands do, but it uses the PCRE regular expression
library to support patterns that are compatible with the regular
expressions of Perl 5. See pcrepattern for a full description of syn-
tax and semantics of the regular expressions that PCRE supports.
A pattern must be specified on the command line unless the -f option
is used (see below).
If no files are specified, pcregrep reads the standard input. By
default, each line that matches the pattern is copied to the standard
output, and if there is more than one file, the file name is printed
before each line of output. However, there are options that can change
how pcregrep behaves.
Lines are limited to BUFSIZ characters. BUFSIZ is defined in
. The newline character is removed from the end of each line
before it is matched against the pattern.
OPTIONS
-V Write the version number of the PCRE library being used to
the standard error stream.
-c Do not print individual lines; instead just print a count of
the number of lines that would otherwise have been printed.
If several files are given, a count is printed for each of
them.
-ffilename
Read a number of patterns from the file, one per line, and
match all of them against each line of input. A line is out-
put if any of the patterns match it. When -f is used, no
pattern is taken from the command line; all arguments are
treated as file names. There is a maximum of 100 patterns.
Trailing white space is removed, and blank lines are
ignored. An empty file contains no patterns and therefore
matches nothing.
-h Suppress printing of filenames when searching multiple
files.
-i Ignore upper/lower case distinctions during comparisons.
-l Instead of printing lines from the files, just print the
names of the files containing lines that would have been
printed. Each file name is printed once, on a separate line.
-n Precede each line by its line number in the file.
-r If any file is a directory, recursively scan the files it
contains. Without -r a directory is scanned as a normal
file.
-s Work silently, that is, display nothing except error mes-
sages. The exit status indicates whether any matches were
found.
-u Operate in UTF-8 mode. This option is available only if PCRE
has been compiled with UTF-8 support. Both the pattern and
each subject line are assumed to be valid strings of UTF-8
characters.
-v Invert the sense of the match, so that lines which do not
match the pattern are now the ones that are found.
-x Force the pattern to be anchored (it must start matching at
the beginning of the line) and in addition, require it to
match the entire line. This is equivalent to having ^ and $
characters at the start and end of each alternative branch
in the regular expression.
LONG OPTIONS
Long forms of all the options are available, as in GNU grep. They are
shown in the following table:
-c --count
-h --no-filename
-i --ignore-case
-l --files-with-matches
-n --line-number
-r --recursive
-s --no-messages
-u --utf-8
-V --version
-v --invert-match
-x --line-regex
-x --line-regexp
In addition, --file=filename is equivalent to -ffilename, and --help
shows the list of options and then exits.
DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is 0 if any matches were found, 1 if no matches were
found, and 2 for syntax errors or inacessible files (even if matches
were found).
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
Last updated: 03 February 2003
Copyright (c) 1997-2003 University of Cambridge.
PCREGREP(1)
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