URL:
<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=15280>
Summary: Feature request: better support for multiple
patterns
Project: grep
Submitted by: epaepa
Submitted on: Fri 12/23/05 at 11:01
Category: None
Severity: 3 - Normal
Item Group: None
Status: None
Privacy: Public
Assigned to: None
Open/Closed: Open
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Details:
Grep lets you specify more than one pattern using multiple -e options. Then
a line matches if any of the patterns match. Effectively each -e means
'or'.
It would be useful to have -and and -not options a la find(1), so
% grep -e hello -and -e there
to match lines containing both words. This simple example could be done with
two grep processes in a pipeline, but it's certainly faster to grep the file
once, and once you start adding context:
% grep --context=10 -e hello -and -e there
it's not really possible to get the same search with two separate greps.
The -v flag negates the sense of matching but it applies globally. You
cannot ask grep to print lines matching one pattern but not another. As far
as I know, grep's regular expressions don't have a negation operator so this
would be an increase in grep's power. And handy together with -and, for
example
% grep --context=10 -e '\*\*\*' -and -not -e 'modification time'
as a way to search your build logs for make errors which aren't the common
'modification time in the future'.
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