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Harshitha Palihawadana
Harshitha Palihawadana

Reputation: 2211

How to find the number of uppercase words in a text, using ubuntu grep?

I want to find the number of uppercase words in a text file by using ubuntu terminal 'grep' command.. I already tried with grep -c [[:upper:]] a.txt command. But it count words which have simple characters also.

My text: I am Tom PERERA

My command line output should 2, that the words are "I" and "PERERA".

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1018

Answers (1)

Hunter McMillen
Hunter McMillen

Reputation: 61520

I believe that the -c flag only returns the number of lines that were matched. If you have more than a single match per line it will give you incorrect results. I typically do something like this: 

echo 'I am Tom PERERA' | grep -oE '\b[A-Z]+\b' | wc -l

Note: you can also use '\b[[:upper:]]+\b' if you prefer the POSIX classes

EDIT: As @tripleee points out, the POSIX class [:upper:] will span locales and is a more portable solution.

Upvotes: 5

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