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unixgrepfull-text-search
Mohsin
Mohsin

Reputation: 852

Unix - How to search for exact string in a file

I am trying to search for all files that contain exactly same id as listed in another file and put the file names in another file. I am using below command to find the files.

grep -w -f SearchList.txt INFILES* > matched.txt

The ids are listed in SearchList.txt file example -

450462134
747837483
352362362

The INFILES files contain data in this format-

0120171116 07:37:45:828501450462134 000001205 0120171116
07:37:45:828501747837483 000001205 0120171116
07:37:45:828501352362362 000001205

The ids which i am looking for are conjoined with other text at the beginning but it has a space at the end.

I tried putting \b at the beginning and end of the search text in SearchList.txt file but i still get incorrect results.

Any leads to right command will be greatly appreciated.

-bash-3.2$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.25(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)

-bash-3.2$ grep --version
grep (GNU grep) 2.5.1

Upvotes: 1

Views: 768

Answers (1)

Thor
Thor

Reputation: 47089

The -w option to grep actually inserts \b on both ends of the pattern, you only want it at the end. One option that works is to add \b to the patterns with sed, e.g.:

sed 's/$/\\b/' SearchList.txt

As you are only interested in matching filenames you should use the -l option with grep. Now use this together with grep and process substitution:

grep -lf <(sed 's/$/\\b/' /path/to/SearchList.txt) INFILES*

Upvotes: 2

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