The
\s refers to a "character class" containing whitespace. (For instance: spaces, tabs.)
The
* is a "quantifier" that matches
zero or more times the character that immediately precedes it.
Thus,
\s* could be interpreted in plain English as
match whitespace zero or more times.
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Note that your use of cat(1) in the examples is unnecessary. The awk(1) program can take its input file as an argument, a la:
Code:
$ awk '/baz/{ print }' boo.txt
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Finally, if that doesn't answer it, what is your question, exactly?
