Extended grep – Search file(s) for lines that match an extended expression.
Syntax
egrep [ options ] 'PATTERN' files ...
egrep is the same as `grep -E'
all other options are the same as grep
The PATTERN is a regexp. In typical usage, the regexp is quoted to prevent the shell from expanding any of the special characters as file name wildcards. Normally, `egrep’ prints the lines that matched.
If multiple file names are provided on the command line, each output line is preceded by the name of the file and a colon.
egrep is usually faster than grep or fgrep.
OPTIONS
-c
Print out a count of the lines that matched the pattern, instead
of the lines themselves.
-s
Be silent. No output is produced, and the exit value indicates
whether or not the pattern was matched.
-v
Invert the sense of the test. `egrep' prints the lines that do
*not* match the pattern, and exits successfully if the pattern was
not matched.
-i
Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the input data.
-l
Only print the names of the files that matched, not the lines that
matched.
-e PATTERN
Use PATTERN as the regexp to match. The purpose of the `-e'
option is to allow patterns that start with a `-'.
Related linux commands:
fgrep – Search file(s) for lines that match a fixed string
gawk – Find and Replace text within file(s)
grep – Search file(s) for lines that match a given pattern
Equivalent Windows commands: FINDSTR – Search for strings in files
