grep searches a file for a given pattern. Execute by: grep [flags] regular_expression file_list Flags are single characters preceeded by '-': -c Only a count of matching lines is printed -f Print file name for matching lines switch, see below -n Each line is preceeded by its line number -v Only print non-matching lines The file_list is a list of files. The file name is normally printed if there is a file given. The -f flag reverses this action. The regular_expression defines the pattern to search for. Upper- and lower-case are always ignored. Blank lines never match. The expression should be quoted to prevent file-name translation. x An ordinary character (not mentioned below) matches that character. '\' The backslash quotes any character. e.g. "\$" matches a dollar-sign. '^' A circumflex at the beginning of an expression matches the beginning of a line. '$' A dollar-sign at the end of an expression matches the end of a line. '.' A period matches any character except "new-line". ':a' A colon matches a class of characters described by the following ':d' character. ":a" matches any alphabetic, ":d" matches digits, ':n' ":n" matches alphanumerics, ": " matches spaces, tabs, and ': ' other control characters, such as new-line. '*' An expression followed by an asterisk matches zero or more occurrances of that expression: "fo*" matches "f", "fo", "foo", etc. '+' An expression followed by a plus sign matches one or more occurrances of that expression: "fo+" matches "fo", etc. '-' An expression followed by a minus sign optionally matches the expression. '[]' A string enclosed in square brackets matches any character in that string, but no others. If the first character in the string is a circumflex, the expression matches any character except "new-line" and the characters in the string. For example, "[xyz]" matches "xx" and "zyx", while "[^xyz]" matches "abc" but not "axb". A range of characters may be specified by two characters separated by "-". Note that, [a-z] matches alphabetics, while [z-a] never matches. The concatenation of regular expressions is a regular expression.