Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!oliveb!mipos3!omepd!merlyn
From: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: the care and feeding of fgrep
Keywords: fgrep
Message-ID: <5282@omepd.UUCP>
Date: 28 Nov 89 20:21:29 GMT
References: <453@nixba.UUCP>
Sender: news@omepd.UUCP
Reply-To: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via Intel, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
Lines: 48
In-reply-to: mike@nixba.UUCP (Mike Lyons)

In article <453@nixba.UUCP>, mike@nixba (Mike Lyons) writes:
| This is something that bugs me now and then (before I forget it again :-)...
| 
| The man page for the grep family has the following description for fgrep:
| 
| 		fgrep [ options ] [ strings ] [ files ]
| 
| The man page also states "Fgrep patterns are fixed strings; it is fast and 
| compact"  My question is, how the heck do you give a list of strings (as im-
| plied here) as an arg to fgrep? Every combination of quotes that I've come up 
| with always results in fgrep treating all but the first string in a list as a 
| filename, with the accompanying "can't open" complaints.  
| 
| When I use fgrep, I invariably put the strings into a file and use the -f 
| option, but this *really shouldn't* be necessary if the man page is correct.  
| 
| Please enlighten me :-)

A Zen master will whack you on the side of your head with his stick at
that request, but I'll try to be a "kinder, gentler" response.

The string arg to fgrep needs *newline*-separated strings, ala:

$ fgrep 'root
sys
merlyn' /etc/passwd
... [output appears here] ...
$

If you use the non-syntactically-powerful C-shell, you'll have to
escape each newline with a backslash, as in:

% fgrep 'root\
sys\
merlyn' /etc/passwd
... [output appears here] ...
%

There.

[look ma... no Perl program... :-]

Just another UNIX hacker,
-- 
/== Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ====\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA, Sol III  |
| merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn	         |
\== Cute Quote: "Welcome to Oregon... Home of the California Raisins!" ==/