MATCH(1L) Schily´s USER COMMANDS MATCH(1L)NAMEmatch - searches for patterns in files
SYNOPSISmatch [ -option ] pattern [ file ... ]
DESCRIPTION
Match searches the named files or standard input (if no filenames are
given) for the occurrences of the given pattern on each line. The pro‐
gram accepts literal characters or special pattern matching characters.
All lines that match the pattern are output on standard output. You
can only specify one pattern string for each match, however, you can
construct an arbitrarily complex string. When you do not specify a
file, match can be used as a filter to display desired lines. Standard
in is used if no files are specified.
OPTIONS-not, -v
Prints all lines that do not match.
-i Ignore the case of letters
-m Force not to use the magic mode
-w Search for pattern as a word
-x Display only those lines which match exactly
-c Display matching count for each file
-l Display name of each file which matches
-s Be silent indicate match in exit code
-h Do not display filenames
-n Precede matching lines with line number (with respect to the
input file)
-b Precede matching lines with block number
REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
The following is a table of all the pattern matching characters:
c An ordinary character (not one of the special characters dis‐
cussed below) is a one character regular expression that matches
that character.
\c A backslash (\) followed by any special character is a one char‐
acter regular expression that matches the special character
itself. The special characters are:
! # % * { } [ ] \ ? ^ $
! Logical OR as in match this!that!the_other. You may have to use
`{}' for precedence grouping.
# A hash mark followed by any regular expression matches any num‐
ber (including zero) occurrences of the regular expression.
? Matches exactly any one character. W? matches Wa, Wb, Wc, W1,
W2, W3 ...
* Matches any number of any character.
% Matches exactly nothing. It can be used in groups of ored pat‐
terns to specify that an empty alternative is possible.
{} Curly brackets may be used to enclose patterns to specify a
precedence grouping, and may be nested. {%!{test}}version
matches the strings testversion and version.
[string]
A non empty string of characters enclosed in square brackets is
a one character regular expression that matches any one charac‐
ter in that string. If however the first character of the
string is a circumflex (^), the one character expression matches
any character which is not in the string. The ^ has this special
meaning only if it occurs first in the string. The minus (-) may
be used to indicate a range of consecutive ASCII characters; for
example, [0-9] is equivalent to any one of the digits. The -
loses it's special meaning if it occurs first (after an initial
^, if any) or last in the string. The right square bracket (])
and the backslash (\) must be quoted with a backslash if you
want to use it within the string.
^ Matches the beginning of a line.
$ Matches the end of a line. (^*$ matches any entire line)
EXAMPLESFILES
None.
SEE ALSOgrep(1), fgrep(1), egrep(1)DIAGNOSTICSNOTES
Even if a match occurs more than once per line, the line is output only
once.
Quote special pattern matching characters to prevent them from being
expanded by the Command Interpreter.
BUGS
The length of the pattern is currently limited to 100 characters.
This limit is reduced by 38 if the -w option is used.
Joerg Schilling 15. Juli 1988 MATCH(1L)
