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From: john@uw-nsr.UUCP (John Sambrook)
Newsgroups: net.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: grep 'RE botch' error
Message-ID: <351@uw-nsr.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Aug-86 12:52:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-nsr.351
Posted: Fri Aug 22 12:52:20 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 24-Aug-86 20:50:34 EDT
References: <191@clan.UUCP>
Reply-To: john@uw-nsr.UUCP (John Sambrook 5-2018)
Organization: UW-Bioengineering, Seattle, WA
Lines: 24
Summary: This is not a bug

In article <191@clan.UUCP> naren@clan.UUCP (Narendra Mehta) writes:
>
>	grep '[' file
>
>	gives a 'RE botch' error on our VAX-750 running 4.2BSD.  If the fix
>has already been posted, could someone please mail me the diffs?  Thanks.

The message is correct.  On our system it is a little clearer:

	grep: RE error 49: [ ] imbalance.

The "[" character is used to introduce a range specification, as in
"[a-z]" to match a single character in the range of "a" to "z".  To
search for a literal '[' character you should escape it with a 
backslash, as in:

	grep '\[' file

Hope this helps.


-- 
John Sambrook				Work: (206) 545-2018
University of Washington WD-12		Home: (206) 487-0180
Seattle, Washington  98195		UUCP: uw-beaver!uw-nsr!john