CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shellunixgrep
Santhiya
Santhiya

Reputation: 119

egrep statement with '@' and '&'

I am working on a shell script program where i am encountering @ and &.

/bin/egrep -c '(@ sMAD:|& MAD :)' $File

Could you please tell me what egrep is doing here. I understand that that we are getting the count of number of lines but this regex part is really confusing for me.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 191

Answers (1)

fedorqui
fedorqui

Reputation: 290415

This is looking for either @ sMAD: or & MAD : in the file referred by $File and counting how many lines satisfy this condition.

egrep -c '(@ sMAD:|& MAD :)' $File
       ^   ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^
       |      |    or this
       |   either this
       count lines that contain

Test

$ cat a
hello
@ sMAD: can match & MAD : everything in the same line  # match 1
& MAD : also does                                      # match 2
but & MAD : is another thing                           # match 3

And now let's run the command:

$ egrep -c '(@ sMAD:|& MAD :)' a
3

Upvotes: 1

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