RGREP(1) User Manuals RGREP(1)

# [NAME](#NAME)

rgrep - a recursive, highlighting grep program

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

**rgrep** *\[ options ]* *pattern* *\[ file ]* **...**

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

*rgrep,* unlike [*grep(1)*](/man/os/jed/grep.1) and [*egrep(1)*](/man/os/jed/egrep.1) rgrep has the ability to recursively descend directories. The traditional way of performing this kind of search on Unix systems utilizes the [*find(1)*](/man/os/jed/find.1) command in conjunction with *[grep(1)](/man/os/jed/grep.1).* However, this results in very poor performance.

# [COMMAND LINE OPTIONS](#COMMAND_LINE_OPTIONS)

*-?*

additional help (use '-?' to avoid shell expansion on some systems)

*-c*

count matches

*-h*

highlight match (ANSI compatable terminal assumed)

*-H*

Output match instead of entire line containing match

*-i*

ignore case

*-l*

list filename only

*-n*

print line number of match

*-F*

follow links

*-r*

recursively scan through directory tree

*-N*

Do NOT perform a recursive search

*-R 'pat'*

like '-r' except that only those files matching 'pat' are checked

*-v*

print only lines that do NOT match the specified pattern

*-x 'ext'*

checks only files with extension given by 'ext'.

*-D*

Print all directories that would be searched. This option is for debugging purposes only. No file is grepped with this option.

*-W 'len'*

lines are 'len' characters long (not newline terminated).

# [SUPPORTED REGULAR EXPRESSIONS:](#SUPPORTED_REGULAR_EXPRESSIONS:)

*.*

match any character except newline

*\\d*

match any digit

*\\e*

match ESC char

*\**

matches zero or more occurences of previous RE

*+*

matches one or more occurences of previous RE

*?*

matches zero or one occurence of previous RE

*^*

matches beginning of line

*$*

matches end of line

*\[ ... ]*

matches any single character between brackets. For example, *\[-02468]* matches *'-'* or any even digit. and *\[-0-9a-z]* matches *'-'* and any digit between *0* and *9* as well as letters *a* through *z.*

*\\{ ... \\}*

*\\( ... \\)*

*\\1, \\2, ..., \\9*

matches match specified by nth *'\\( ... \\)'* expression. For example, *'\\(\[\[a-zA-Z]+\\)\\1\[\\t]'* matches any word repeated consecutively.

# [EXAMPLES](#EXAMPLES)

Look in all files with a 'c' extension in current directory and all its subdirectories looking for matches of 'int ' at the beginning of a line, printing the line containing the match with its line number: (two methods)

*rgrep -n -R '\*.c' '^int ' .*

*rgrep -n -x c '^int ' .*

Highlight all matches of repeated words in file 'paper.tex':

*rgrep -h* *'\[ \\t]\\(\[a-zA-Z]+\\)\[\\\\t]+\\1[\\t ' paper.tex*

*rgrep -h '^\\(\[a-zA-Z]+\\)\[\\\\t]+\\1[+\\t ' paper.tex*

(Note that this version of rgrep requires two passes for this example)

Search through all files EXCEPT .o and .a file below /usr/src/linux looking for the string 'mouse' without regard to case:

*rgrep -i -R '\*.\[^ao]' mouse /usr/src/linux*

Search a fixed record length FITS file for the keyword EXTNAME:

*rgrep -W80 ^EXTNAME file.fits*

(Note that the regular expression *'^\[A-Z]+'* will dump all fits headers.)

# [AUTHOR](#AUTHOR)

*"John E. Davis" <davis@space.mit.edu>*

-- This manpage was translated to troff by

"Boris D. Beletsky" <borik@isracom.co.il>

OCT 1996 Debian

---

Document: rgrep(1) from jed 0.99.19-r8 (Chainguard OS)
Source: git://git.jedsoft.org/git/jed.git