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Re: [bug-grep] Grep bug


From: Stepan Kasal
Subject: Re: [bug-grep] Grep bug
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 08:15:03 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.4.1i

Hello,

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 10:36:41AM -0500, Edna Reid wrote:
> When I invoke grep on the command it return nothing even the file is
> there and I can also vi the file.

a guess: perhaps you misunderstood the purpose of grep.
It's purpose is to find text contained in files, not to find whole files.
For example:

        grep -i moo animals.txt

searches of occurences of "moo" in file animals.txt and

        grep -i moo *.txt

searches for occurences of "moo" in all *.txt files in current directory.

If you want to search a whole subtree, you can use something like

        grep -i -r moo .
or
        grep -ir moo dirname

To search files, according to their name, you have to use find, like this

        find . -name '*.txt' -iname '*moo*'
or
        find . -iname '*moo*.txt'

searches for *.txt files whose _names_ contain the string "moo".

>  Dell 2650 server     linux es os

This implies you are using GNU grep.  You could determine the version of
grep by "grep --version", which would be important for bug report.

But if my guess was true and you have misunderstood how grep is used,
a fine manual could help you.  When you run "info find", you get
a manual to find; it's also on the web:
http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/html_node/find_html/index.html
or dowloadable in various formats
http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/find.html

Similarily, the grep manual can be accessed by "info grep" on your computer,
or on the web: http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/doc/grep.html

Unfortunately, the grep manual is morover a reference, not a tutorial;
a book covering basics of unix or GNU/Linux could serve better here.

Have a nice day,
         Stepan Kasal





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