CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxgrep
Douglas Anderson
Douglas Anderson

Reputation: 4690

grep -- handle text within quotes

I have a line of text that I'm using grep to see if the letter d exists. Here is an example of what is going on:

Returns 1, this is correct:

echo d file='hello world' | grep -c -w d

Returns 0, this is correct:

echo file='hello world' | grep -c -w d

Returns 1, this is correct:

echo d file='hello world d' | grep -c -w d

Returns 1 -- should return 0:

echo file='hello world d' | grep -c -w d

I need it to ignore the data inside the single quotes. Is grep the right tool to use here or is there something else that might help?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1311

Answers (3)

RC.
RC.

Reputation: 28207

Based on the info you provided, this should work:

grep -c -E "^[^']*?d.*?'.*?'"

%> cat blah.sh

echo d file=\'hello world\' | grep -c -E "^[^']*?d.*?'.*?'"
echo file=\'hello world\' | grep -c -E "^[^']*?d.*?'.*?'"
echo d file=\'hello world d\' | grep -c -E "^[^']*?d.*?'.*?'"
echo file=\'hello world d\' | grep -c -E "^[^']*?d.*?'.*?'"

%> ./blah.sh
1
0
1
0

Upvotes: 1

Aaron Digulla
Aaron Digulla

Reputation: 328574

Pipe the output through a tool to get rid of anything you don't want, for example sed:

echo d file='hello world' | sed -e "s:'[^']*'::g" | grep -c -w d

This reads: replace (s) anything which matches the regular expression (delimited with :) with the empty string.

Upvotes: 2

Barry Kelly
Barry Kelly

Reputation: 42152

I'd use sed to remove all text inside quotes, and then do a grep on the output of sed. Something like this:

echo "d 'hi there'" | sed -r "s|'[^']*'||g" | grep -c -w d

Upvotes: 5

Related Questions