Show all mozilla related processes running. 'Being on the command line' refers to the arguments passed to grep.

(The character '.' is a relative path from the current directory to itself.)Īs above, but only output the names of files containing the string 'foo'.

To search all files in the current directory and all its subdirectories for the string 'foo'. To search all files in the [current directory for the string 'foo'. Many text and word processors now employ regular expression search features, which those applications will often refer to as a 'grep tool' or 'grep mode' in which one creates 'grep patterns', causing confusion, especially in non-Unix environments. The word 'grep' has also become a synonym for regular expressions themselves. The direct object is the set of files searched: 'Joe grepped his Usenet spool for his name.' Contrast with google. The grep command searches for the pattern specified by the Pattern parameter and writes each matching line to standard output. Many other commands contain the word 'grep.' GNU's pgrep, for instance, displays the process numbers which match a regular expression.Īs the name 'grep' neatly fits the phonology of English, it is often used as a verb, meaning to search – usually, to search a known set of files, as one would with the grep utility. All these variations of grep have been ported to many computer operating systems. Because the search pattern is called a regular expression, we can. The grep command is part of the GNU Core-utilities package and filters text files for a given character arrangement or pattern. As the name implies, Grep is used to search text files with regular expressions (shortly regex). When g precedes pattern, it means all lines in the file, or perform a global substitution. Tcgrep is a rewrite of grep and uses Perl regular expression syntax. Grep stands for Global regular expression print. There are many derivatives of grep, for example agrep which stands for approximate grep to facilitate fuzzy string searching, fgrep for fixed pattern searches, and egrep for searches involving more sophisticated regular expression syntax.

Grep meaning in linux