grep for specific phrases
 

Is there a way to grep for an absolute string without returning partial word matches? Let's say I'm pulling a directory listing and looking for a particular file called test.txt. A ls shows:

Some.File
test.txt
test.txt.bak

If I try to grep test.txt, I get test.txt and test.txt.bak. I just want to return test.txt. I tried using the -w command but it didn't work, I'm guessing because there's no special characters after .txt, like a space or tab, just a continuation of alphanumerics. Any way to do this?

You can try grep -x.

That's exactly what I needed. Looks like I got my man lines crossed when I was looking at the flags. :D Thanks, colucix.

The way I read the manual, -x forces a match of the whole line.

How about grep "test.txt " or grep "test.txt[^.]"

(These don't work if test.txt is at the end of the line)

grep ^test.txt$ <yourfile>

"-w" ... :rolleyes: