[SOLVED] What's Wrong with the RegEx [Simple]

thund3rstruck · 04-04-2011, 10:47 AM

Ok, I'm just started to feel stupid because I just can't seem to get regular expressions working in Linux the way they work on Windows.

To keep things simple, here is a ridiculously elementary expression that should return a list of mounted samba shares.

Match the lines that start with '//'
Match any character until reaching whitespace

Code:

$ egrep '^//[^ ]*' /etc/mtab

I have tried multiple variations ([^\s],\S, etc) to match until whitespace is reached but no matter which variation I try the expression always matches the entire line and not just the share.

Code:

//baileyfs01/Profiles/developer /home/developer/network/baileyfs01/Profiles/developer cifs rw,mand 0 0

I've started to rely too much on $ cut -d ' ' in a lot of the scripts I'm migrating over to Linux and I want to get this RegEx figured out so I can do things properly before I get too wrapped up in recoding the more advanced programs and scripts.

AlucardZero · 04-04-2011, 10:54 AM

grep returns the whole line by default. sounds like you want egrep's -o option.

Code:

       -o, --only-matching
              Print only the matched (non-empty) parts of a matching line, with each such part on
              a separate output line.

thund3rstruck · 04-04-2011, 11:04 AM

Thanks AlucardZero (that nic wouldn't happen to be based on CastleVania's Alucard?)

DOH! I just learned something new...

Cheers!