Leslie E. Ballentine wrote: > >[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]% cat testfile > >12345 > > -o sss > >-o > > > >[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]% grep 'o' testfile > > -o sss > >-o > >[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]% grep '-o' testfile > > At this point, grep hangs indefinitely. > It seems that grep cannot find the string '-o'.
It is waiting for input, because it interprets '-o' as the option -o, and thus sees testfile as a pattern. > And how do I search a file for the characters "-o"? Precede it with the option -e. $ grep -e -o testfile Or quote plus escape the dash: $ grep '\-o' testfile Just quoting the pattern is not enough, because anything can be quoted, for example: $ 'grep' '-e' 'hmm' '-e' '-o' 'testfile' Benno
