How to grep using "*"

[Pactiv Development]

I have a file called filelist with following lines in them:

/cdrom
/usr/local/bin
/oracle/ABC/sapdata
/oracle/DEF/sapdata
/oracle/ABC/archlog

I want to grep out /oracle/*/sapdata and am using the following command which is not working:

# grep -v /oracle/*/sapdata filelist

I get the following output:
/cdrom
/usr/local/bin
/oracle/ABC/sapdata
/oracle/DEF/sapdata
/oracle/ABC/archlog

I am expecting /oracle/ABC/sapdata and /oracle/DEF/sapdata to be excluded.

Please help, thanks.

[Patrick Wallek]

Do you have other lines with 'sapdata' in them?

Could you do:

grep -v sapdata filelist

[Marvin Strong · Accepted solution]

grep -v "/oracle/.*/sapdata" filelist

I think that will exclude anything that starts with oracle and ends with sapdata.

* in regex means match 0 or more of the preceding character.

[Alan Meyer_4]

try this

grep '^/oracle/' filelist |grep '/sapdata$'

[Torsten.]

Hi,

have a look at this page, it gives a good idea how to use wildcard with grep.
(You'll have more fun than reading a man page)
Many examples for beginners!

http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/unix/grep.html#wildcards

[Alan Meyer_4]

oops, sorry I miss read your request... never mind

[Alan Meyer_4]

revised...

grep -v '^/oracle/' test.dat |grep -v '/sapdata$'

[Rodney Hills]

I think you only need to put quotes around your search text.

# grep -v "/oracle/*/sapdata" filelist

Otherwise the shell will try to expand the file paths.

HTH

-- Rod Hills

[Sandman!]

I agree with Marvin and Rodney's solution i.e.

# grep -v '/oracle/.*/sapdata'

should do the trick...regards!

[John E.Ophious]

Pactiv Development,

grep with a combination of -v and some quotations around your search string just might do the trick.

Peace and Chicken Grease,

John E. Ophious