What If I wanted to scan a string like the following...

02jfijaoif==thata==asfe489qj=034jf[iqojf[iajse=fija=039jwaijefijaw=0iejf=0ieaj=0fjas0=ijdf0ijfjdifajs;ldfja;lskdfalskdfjaslkdfjsdajasldkfja's lkdja'skldjfj=30j[09jfsjdf[iasjd[fij=09j309jIJF

Anyhow just one giant string that's longer than my screen's width. If I simply copy and paste that string after a grep command, it seems that the terminal inserts newlines at the terminal's width and therefore not the whole string goes in.

Even if I insert a quote before the beginning of the string and then paste it in, terminal still reads in a newlines somehow and obviously says command not found, etc.

How do I grep for a long consecutive string like this?

It should just work. Are you running bash? What Linux are you on and how old is it?

The problem probably is coming from the copy-and-paste. It's possible that the newlines are being inserted because the copy-and-paste copied the new lines literally. If your familiar with vi, you could put the text into a file and remove the newlines. Or actually put it in your favourite text editor and make sure it's all on 1 line of text.

--Shaun