How to use grep for multiple patterns at once?

How to use grep for multiple patterns at once?

With grep we can use -e PATTERN to define multiple patterns at once. The syntax for the same would be: grep [args] PATH -e PATTERN-1 -e PATTERN-2 .. Similarly you can add -e PATTERN for as many patterns you have to grep recursively. We can use the same syntax with -e PATTERN to grep for multiple strings in the same file.

Can you use grep to search multiple strings?

You can grep multiple strings in different files and directories. The tool prints all lines that contain the words you specify as a search pattern. In this guide, we will show you how to use grep to search multiple words or string patterns.

How to perform a recursive search in grep?

In this tutorial we learned that grep itself has an argument to perform recursive search for any pattern or string. You can use -r to grep recursively inside all directories and sub-directories or use -R to also include symlinks in your search (which is excluded with -r ).

Is there a way to include all files in grep?

To include all files, use sudo with the grep command. Enter the sudo password, and grep will search through all files. The grep command searches only in the current directory when you use the asterisk wildcard. To include all subdirectories when searching for multiple patterns, add the -R operator to grep:

When do you use grep instead of egrep?

If you need both words are close each other, for example no more than 3 lines, you can do this: Same example but filtering only *.txt files: And also you can replace grep command with egrep command if you want also find with regular expressions.

How to use grep recursive in plain text?

Grep for a string only in pre-defined files We can also define filename in plain text format or regex which should be searched to grep the provided pattern. For example, I wish to grep for ” test ” string but only in files which contain ” lvm ” or ” linux ” in the filename.