regular expression to pattern strings

bigbada · 03-14-2011, 12:01 PM

In a file i have strings:

Code:

- Muammar al-Kaddafi 
- Moammar Gadhafi 
- Muammar al-Qadhafi 
- Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi 
- Moamer Gadafi

the file is test.txt

Now i wanna write a regular expression pattern to match all the words

I tried

Code:

cat test | grep -r M[uo]'*am+[ae]r\s[aAG]l*-*Q*K*ad+h*afi

But it doesnt work

if i try
cat test | grep -r M[uo] ...till here it works..
Any suggestion ? The regular expression checker online says that the expression is ok.. So whats the problem?

corp769 · 03-14-2011, 12:11 PM

Code:

cat test | grep Muammar al-Kaddafi
cat test | grep Moammar Gadhafi
cat test | grep Muammar al-Qadhafi
cat test | grep Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi
cat test | grep Moamer Gadafi

bigbada · 03-14-2011, 12:16 PM

Im asking for a solution for my regular expression to match all.. What you posted is not my question.

corp769 · 03-14-2011, 12:32 PM

I know... It just seemed like that's pretty much what you need. I always keep it simple...

But now to your question though... You have only one quotation mark in your expression first of all. Second of all, I do think you need to use egrep.

bigbada · 03-14-2011, 12:43 PM

I tried egrep also, but it doesnt find the char ' ...

ab23'afs

So egrep ' doesnt find the word.. Does the ' not work in grep ?

corp769 · 03-14-2011, 01:03 PM

Have you tried escaping the single quotation mark? Using \'

b0uncer · 03-14-2011, 01:11 PM

Like said, escape the quotation mark. By itself it may start a quoted piece of characters, but it never stops (no ending quote).

See this for example:

Code:

echo "foo'bar" |grep \'

(GNU grep 2.6.3)

Edit: not that it means anything, but the original post, without explanations, does have a little questionable tone to it, taking into account the current situation. It wouldn't harm if you explained a little more what you're trying to achieve in general; if it's just technical stuff with regular expressions and/or matching in general, you could work this with more general strings (the so-called "minimal working example"). This is not, after all, a political forum.

jameslynn · 03-24-2011, 10:50 AM

(M[ou]'?am+[ae]r( [AEae]l-?)? ?[GKQ]h?[aeu]+([dtz][dhz]?){1-2}af[iy])

grail · 03-24-2011, 08:18 PM

Not to be too picky, but without relevance to what you do not want, ultimately the simplest answer (apart from any character on a line as you want all lines),
would be:

Code:

grep '^M' file