Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Name

grep

Synopsis

grep [options] pattern [files]

Search one or more files for lines that match a regular expression pattern. Regular expressions are described in Chapter 20. Exit status is 0 if any lines match, 1 if none match, and 2 for errors. See also egrep and fgrep.

Options

-a, --text

Don’t suppress output lines with binary data; treat as text.

-A num, --after-context= num

Print num lines of text that occur after the matching line.

-b, --byte-offset

Print the byte offset within the input file before each line of output.

-B num, —before-context=num

Print num lines of text that occur before the matching line.

--binary-files= type

Treat binary files as specified. By default, grep treats binary files as such (type is binary). If a matching string is found within a binary file, grep reports only that the file matches; nothing is printed for nonmatching binary files. If type is without-match, grep assumes binary files don’t match and skips them altogether. Same as -I. Using a type of text causes grep to treat binary files as text and print all matched lines. Same as -a.

-c, --count

Print only a count of matched lines. With the -v or --invert-match option, count nonmatching lines.

-C[num], --context=[num], - num

Print num lines of leading and trailing context. Default context is 2 lines.

-d action, --directories= action

Define an action for processing directories. Possible actions are:

read

Read directories like ordinary files (default).

skip

Skip directories.

recurse

Recursively ...