grep for specific phrases

Harry Seldon · 05-27-2008, 01:59 PM

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?

colucix · 05-27-2008, 02:46 PM

You can try grep -x.

Harry Seldon · 05-27-2008, 02:51 PM

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

Thanks, colucix.

pixellany · 05-27-2008, 02:59 PM

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)

chrism01 · 05-27-2008, 06:47 PM

grep ^test.txt$ <yourfile>

syg00 · 05-27-2008, 07:58 PM

"-w" ...