pcregrep

PCREGREP(1)                                                        PCREGREP(1)



NAME
       pcregrep - a grep with Perl-compatible regular expressions.

SYNOPSIS
       pcregrep [-Vcfhilnrsvx] pattern [file] ...



DESCRIPTION
       pcregrep  searches  files  for  character  patterns, in the same way as
       other grep commands do, but it uses the PCRE regular expression library
       to support patterns that are compatible with the regular expressions of
       Perl 5. See pcre(3) for a full description of syntax and semantics.

       If no files are  specified,  pcregrep  reads  the  standard  input.  By
       default,  each  line that matches the pattern is copied to the standard
       output, and if there is more than one file, the file  name  is  printed
       before  each line of output. However, there are options that can change
       how pcregrep behaves.

       Lines are limited to BUFSIZ characters. BUFSIZ is defined in <stdio.h>.
       The newline character is removed from the end of each line before it is
       matched against the pattern.



OPTIONS
       -V        Write the version number of the PCRE library  being  used  to
                 the standard error stream.

       -c        Do  not print individual lines; instead just print a count of
                 the number of lines that would otherwise have  been  printed.
                 If  several  files  are given, a count is printed for each of
                 them.

       -ffilename
                 Read patterns from the file, one per line, and match all pat-
                 terns  against each line. There is a maximum of 100 patterns.
                 Trailing white space is removed, and blank lines are ignored.
                 An  empty  file  contains  no  patterns and therefore matches
                 nothing.

       -h        Suppress printing of filenames when searching multiple files.

       -i        Ignore upper/lower case distinctions during comparisons.

       -l        Instead  of  printing  lines  from  the files, just print the
                 names of the files containing  lines  that  would  have  been
                 printed.  Each file name is printed once, on a separate line.

       -n        Precede each line by its line number in the file.

       -r        If any file is a directory, recursively  scan  the  files  it
                 contains. Without -r a directory is scanned as a normal file.

       -s        Work silently, that is, display  nothing  except  error  mes-
                 sages.   The  exit  status indicates whether any matches were
                 found.

       -v        Invert the sense of the match, so that  lines  which  do  not
                 match the pattern are now the ones that are found.

       -x        Force  the  pattern to be anchored (it must start matching at
                 the beginning of the line) and in  addition,  require  it  to
                 match  the  entire line. This is equivalent to having ^ and $
                 characters at the start and end of each alternative branch in
                 the regular expression.



SEE ALSO
       pcre(3), Perl 5 documentation



DIAGNOSTICS
       Exit status is 0 if any matches were found, 1 if no matches were found,
       and 2 for syntax errors or inacessible  files  (even  if  matches  were
       found).



AUTHOR
       Philip Hazel <ph10@cam.ac.uk>

       Last updated: 15 August 2001
       Copyright (c) 1997-2001 University of Cambridge.



                                                                   PCREGREP(1)