fgrep

fgrep [options] [pattern] [files]

Search one or more files for lines that match a literal, text-string pattern. Because fgrep does not support regular expressions, it is faster than grep (hence fgrep, for fast grep). Exit status is 0 if any lines match, 1 if not, and 2 for errors. See also egrep and grep.

Options

-b

Precede each line with its block number. (Not terribly useful.)

-c

Print only a count of matched lines.

-e pat

Use this if pat begins with -.

-ffile

Take a list of patterns from file.

-h

Print matched lines but not filenames (inverse of -l).

-i

Ignore uppercase and lowercase distinctions.

-l

List filenames but not matched lines.

-n

Print lines and their line numbers.

-s

Silent mode: print only error messages, and return the exit status. Not on SVR4, but common on most commercial Unix systems.

-v

Print all lines that don't match pattern.

-x

Print lines only if pattern matches the entire line.

Examples

Print lines in file that don't contain any spaces:

fgrep -v ' ' file

Print lines in file that contain the words in spell_list:

fgrep -f spell_list file