Regular Expression in Linux/Unix Part 2

This is our second part on Regular Expressions in Linux. Please have a look at our first part here.

Interval Regular expressions

These are used to mention no of character/character set reputation info. Note that interval regular expression and extended reg require -E option with grep

Note: In order to use this set of regular expressions you have to us -E with grep command and -r option with sed commands

 

{n} –n occurrence of the previous character

{n,m} – n to m times occurrence of the previous character

{m, } –m or more occurrence of the previous character.

Example 1: Find all the file names which contain “t” and  t repeats for 3 times consecutively.

ls -l | grep -E ‘t{3}’

-E option is used to extend regexp understanding for grep.
Example 2: Find all the file names which contain l letter in filename with 1 occurrence to 3 occurrence consecutively.

ls -l | grep -E ‘l{1,3}’

Example 3: Find all the file names which contains k letter 5 and more in a file name.

ls -l | grep -E 'k{5,}'

This is bit tricky, let me explain this. Actually we given a range i.e 5 to infinity(Just given only comma after 5).

 

Extended regular expressions

These regular expressions extend the regular expression features.

Note:In order to use this set of regular expressions you have to us -E with grep command and -r option with sed commands

+ –one more occurrence of the previous character

| — or option, we can specify either a character to present in the pattern.

? — 0 or one occurrence of the previous character

() — grouping of character set.

Example 1: Find all the files which contains f letter, one more occurrences.

ls -l | grep -E ‘f+’

Example 2: Find all the files which may contain a or b in it’s file name

ls -l | grep -E ‘a|b’

Example 3: Find all the files which may contain t or 1 occurrence of t in filename

ls -l | grep -E ‘t?’

for example i have below files

test

best
see
do

my grep command will list test, best files as output.

Note: My grep output contain all these files though see and do files do not contain t, the is because we given ? which will search for 0 or 1 occurrence of the previous character. See and do contains 0 t’s in it’s name, so it will find these files too.

Example 4: Find all the files which contains ab in the sequence

ls -l | grep -E ‘(ab)’

This will give all the files which contains ab in the file name consequently.

Please stay tuned to our next article on grep command and how to use it.

Post Views: 11,914
The following two tabs change content below.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy YouTube channel

Surendra Anne

Mr Surendra Anne is from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. He is a Linux/Open source supporter who believes in Hard work, A down to earth person, Likes to share knowledge with others, Loves dogs, Likes photography. He works as Devops Engineer with Taggle systems, an IOT automatic water metering company, Sydney . You can contact him at surendra (@) linuxnix dot com.