CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosadobe-indesignbbeditgrep-indesign
wide_eyed_pupil
wide_eyed_pupil

Reputation: 3451

How do I grep for all lines without a "@" character in the line

I have a text file open in BBEdit/InDesign with email addresses on some lines (about a third of the lines) and name and date stuff on the other lines. I just want to keep the lines that have emails and remove all the others.

A simple pattern I can see to eliminate all the lines apart from those with email addresses on them is to have a negative match for the @ character.

I can't use grep -v pattern because the Find and Replace implementation of grep dialogue box just has the fields for Find pattern and Replace pattern. grep -something options don't exist in this context.

Note, I am note trying to construct a valid email address test at all, just using the presence of one (or more) @ character to allow a line to stay, all other lines must be deleted from the list.

The closest I got was a pattern which hits only the email address lines (opposite outcome of my goal): 

^((\w+|[ \.])\w+)[?@].*$

I tried various combination of ^.*[^@].*$ and more sophisticated /w and [/w|\.] in parentheses and escaping the @ with [^\@] and negative look forwards like (!?).

I want to find these non-email address lines and delete them using any of these apps on OS X BBEdit/InDesign. I will use the command line if I have to. There must be a way using in-app Find and Replace with grep though I'd expect.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1871

Answers (1)

Natsfan
Natsfan

Reputation: 4847

As stated in the comments grep -v @ filename lists all lines without an @ symbol. You could also use grep @ filename > new_filename The file new_filename will consist only of lines with @. You can use this new file or delete all lines in the old file and paste contents of new file into it.

Upvotes: 0

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