don't know if this is the right area for this question, please pardon me if I'm misdirected.....

I'm writing a script that when i pass the parameter to it, it looks in a predetermined file and looks for a string. so far it works sortof. but if input part of a string it finds it but it should find it if i enter the whole string (for example, if i enter "pcd" it finds "pcdebb"). How can I limit it to find the whole string?

I also want to sort results if I have more than one result. would it be better if I redirect the results to a file then sort the file and then display the results?

The line of code I'm using:

grep -i "$1" [filename] || echo "no records found"

thanx for any help for a n00b

If I had a file named somefile.txt, and inside it I had the words gdb gdba gdbc, and I only wanted to find gdb, I would use the following command:

grep -w 'gdb' somefile.txt

I hope that helps.

If you do a man grep, you'll find a lot of information on grep and regular expressions.

I reckon this is a linux - general question.

great, missed the -w option, works perfect, now to sorting.

am i having a mental problem if I say I like shell scripting a little bit?

I wouldn't say that. You can do tons of things through shell scripts if you know what you're doing. It's a good skill to have. I wish I did.

well I'll be taking a shell scripting class starting in January, and I have a book on it's way to me that I bought on amazon.com. it's really very interesting as I'm getting more into *nix

Just pipe the output through the sort command:

ohhhh, that's a little easier than what i did. I basically piped the grep results to a file then sorted the file, but that's much easier!

Hi, everyone,

since we on the topic of grep, can i ask so more questions on this?

I have a prob wif this prob, i ned to show words that begin wif a single 'z', and that is not adjacent to a vowel and this includes words starting and ending with 'z'.

i am able to get the words that do not have a vowel that is adjacent to 'z' but i cant get those words with a single 'z'. how do i do tat?

i tried grep 'z\{1\}' /usr/share/dict/words but i get no output. when i change to
grep 'z\{2\}' /usr/share/dict/words, i get those words with 2 'z' inside. is this the way to do it or is there another way?

if i get to do a single z, i would ned to find those words that do not have a vowel that is adjacent to 'z' which i did
grep '[^aeiouzAEIOUZ]z' /usr/share/dict/words | grep 'z[^aeiouzAEIOUZ]'
i am able to get the below ouput

blitzkrieg
Boltzmann
chutzpah
enzyme
Fitzgerald
Fitzpatrick
Fitzroy
frenzy
Holzman
Laszlo
Metzler
Nietzsche
Rosenzweig
Sulzberger

but this does not include the word waltz which fulfil the conditions as stated above, which ends with a 'z'.

can anyone help me?

I feel like there was someone asking about this same homework assignment here a day or two ago

Isit? Can direct me to that thread?

yeah I looked around and I can't find the bugger. I shouldn't have given a spoiler on a homework question anyway.

You want to grep for \(either the beginning of a line OR a non-vowel, non-z\) z \(either the end of a line or a non-vowel, non-z\)
So if you look that stuff up in a page that describes regular expressions, you'll have it. I make the assumption that there is one line per word, as is the case in /usr/share/dict/words: otherwise you'll have to look for some other sort of word boundary instead.

Well I've gone this far, so I might as well say that ^ matches the beginning of a line, $ matches the end, and \| gives an "or" effect. I'd be an easy A as a teacher.

Hi,

yes i do know abt '^', '$', '\|'. But my prob is

1) I cant get words that only contains a single 'z'. in which i tried the method mention in my previous post, and i could not get it. Is there any other way to achieve that aim?

2) /usr/share/dict/words is the path where I am supposed to look into to find the words

3) by doing this
grep '^z\|z$' /usr/share/dict/words

I am able to get words that start wif 'z' or end wif 'z'
but when i tried this

grep '^z\|z$' /usr/share/dict/words | grep [^aeiouzAEIOUZ]z\|z[^aeiouzAEIOUZ]

a combi of the above, no results is being shown.

What I said is that i can get words beginning or ending wif 'z', can get words that do not have a vowel that is adjacent to 'z' , but i cant get words that start with a single 'z' or combine all of them together.

i even tried this
egrep '^z|z$|[^aeiouzAEIOUZ]z|z[^aeiouzAEIOUZ]' /usr/share/dict/words

which gives me words such as

waltzes
waltzing
whiz
zonal
zonally
zone
zoned
zones
zoning
zoo
zoological
zoologically
zoom
zooms
zoos

which does not fulfill the conditions at all.

so far do you understand what i am having difficulties with?

Can you verify for me that this is the problem you want to solve?:

"Find all words which have a z which is not adjacent to any vowels or other z's"

I'm reasonably confident that I just gave you a solution to that. If that's not the problem, then I gave you the wrong answer : )

hi,

I am sorry for my poor english bu t I do not understnad the solution that you have given me. The exact questions is as follows

All words containing a single 'z' that is not adjacent to a vowel (this includes words ending or starrting with z)

Is your solution cater to this question?