1agrep(1) General Commands Manual agrep(1)
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6 agrep - print lines approximately matching a pattern
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9 agrep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...
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12 Searches for approximate matches of PATTERN in each FILE or standard
13 input. Example: `agrep -2 optimize foo.txt' outputs all lines in file
14 `foo.txt' that match "optimize" within two errors. E.g. lines which
15 contain "optimise", "optmise", and "opitmize" all match.
16
18 Regexp selection and interpretation:
19 -e PATTERN, --regexp=PATTERN
20 Use PATTERN as a regular expression; useful to protect patterns
21 beginning with -.
22 -i, --ignore-case
24 Ignore case distinctions (as defined by the current locale) in
25 PATTERN and input files.
26 -k, --literal
28 Treat PATTERN as a literal string, that is, a fixed string with
29 no special characters.
30 -w, --word-regexp
32 Force PATTERN to match only whole words. A "whole word" is a
33 substring which either starts at the beginning or the record or
34 is preceded by a non-word constituent character. Similarly,
35 the substring must either end at the end of the record or be
36 followed by a non-word constituent character. Word-constituent
37 characters are alphanumerics (as defined by the current locale)
38 and the underscore character. Note that the non-word con‐
39 stituent characters must surround the match; they cannot be
40 counted as errors.
41 Approximate matching settings:
43 -D NUM, --delete-cost=NUM
44 Set cost of missing characters to NUM.
45 -I NUM, --insert-cost=NUM
47 Set cost of extra characters to NUM.
48 -S NUM, --substitute-cost=NUM
50 Set cost of incorrect characters to NUM. Note that a deletion
51 (a missing character) and an insertion (an extra character)
52 together constitute a substituted character, but the cost will
53 be the that of a deletion and an insertion added together.
54 Thus, if the const of a substitution is set to be larger than
55 the sum of the costs of deletion and insertion, direct substitu‐
56 tions will never be done.
57 -E NUM, --max-errors=NUM
59 Select records that have at most NUM errors.
60 -# Select records that have at most # errors (# is a digit between
62 0 and 9).
63 Miscellaneous:
65 -d PATTERN, --delimiter=PATTERN
66 Set the record delimiter regular expression to PATTERN. The
67 text between two delimiters, before the first delimiter, and
68 after the last delimiter is considered to be a record. The
69 default record delimiter is the regexp "\n", so by default a
70 record is a line. PATTERN can be any regular expression that
71 does not match the empty string. For example, using -d "^From "
72 defines mail messages as records in a Mailbox format file.
73 -v, --invert-match
75 Select non-matching records instead of matching records.
76 -V, --version
78 Print version information and exit.
79 -y, --nothing
81 Does nothing. This options exists only for compatibility with
82 the non-free agrep program.
83 --help Display a brief help message and exit.
85 Output control:
87 -B, --best-match
88 Only output the best matching records, that is, the records with
89 the lowest cost. This is currently implemented by making two
90 passes over the input files and cannot be used when reading from
91 standard input.
92 --color, --colour
94 Highlight the matching strings in the output with a color
95 marker. The color string is taken from the GREP_COLOR environ‐
96 ment variable. The default color is red.
97 -c, --count
99 Only print a count of matching records per each input file, sup‐
100 pressing normal output.
101 -h, --no-filename
103 Suppress the prefixing filename on output when multiple files
104 are searched.
105 -H, --with-filename
107 Prefix each output record with the name of the input file where
108 the record was read from.
109 -l, --files-with-matches
111 Only print the name of each input file which contains at least
112 one match, suppressing normal output. The scanning for each
113 file will stop on the first match.
114 -n, --record-number
116 Prefix each output record with its sequence number in the input
117 file. The number of the first record is 1.
118 -q, --quiet, --silent
120 Do not write anything to standard output. Exit immediately with
121 zero exit status if a match is found.
122 -s, --show-cost
124 Print match cost with output.
125 --show-position
127 Prefix each output record with the start and end offset of the
128 first match within the record. The offset of the first charac‐
129 ter of the record is 0. The end position is given as the offset
130 of the first character after the match.
131 -M, --delimiter-after
133 By default, the record delimiter is the newline character and is
134 output after the matching record. If -d is used, the record
135 delimiter will be output before the matching record. This
136 option causes the delimiter to be output after the matching
137 record.
138 With no FILE, or when FILE is -, reads standard input. If less than
140 two FILEs are given -h is assumed, otherwise -H is the default.
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143 Exit status is 0 if a match is found, 1 for no match, and 2 if there
144 were errors. If -E or -# is not specified, only exact matches are
145 selected.
146 PATTERN is a POSIX extended regular expression (ERE) with the TRE
148 extensions.
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151 Report bugs to the TRE mailing list <tre-general@lists.laurikari.net>.
152
154 Copyright © 2002-2004 Ville Laurikari.
155 This is free software, and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. You are
156 welcome to redistribute this software under certain conditions; see the
157 source for the full license text.
158TRE agrep 0.8.0 November 21, 2004 agrep(1)