grep is a command line utility originally written for use with the Unix operating system. The name comes from a command in the Unix text editor ed that takes the form g/re/p meaning "search globally for matches to the regular expression re, and print lines where they are found". This describes the default behavior of the grep command. Grep takes a regular expression on the command line, reads standard input or a list of files, and outputs the lines containing matches for the regular expression. There are various command line switches available when using grep that modify that default behavior.
There are many derivatives of grep, for example agrep which stands for approximate grep to facilitate fuzzy string searching, fgrep for fixed pattern searches, and egrep for searches involving more sophisticated regular expression syntax. Tcgrep is a rewrite of grep and uses Perl regular expression syntax. All these variations of grep have been ported to many computer operating systems.
The Perl programming language provides a pattern matching function named grep, as do other languages.
Grep is often used as a verb, meaning to search – usually, to search a known set of files, as one would with the grep utility. The direct object is the set of files searched: "Joe grepped his Usenet spool for his name." Contrast google, meaning to search an unknown set of files (the entire Web) with the Google search engine. "Mary googled for Wikipedia references."
1 Examples
grep foo *
Searches all files in the current directory for the string "foo".
grep -r foo *
Searches all files in the current directory and all its subdirectories for the string "foo".
2 External links
Unix programs
