grep command

[Unix or Linux?]

I have a very large file that I wish to retrieve information from. The file contains data that can be repeated many times such as.

USERNAME:john.doe
EMAIL:jonh.doe@yahoo.com
ADDRESS:somewhere
PHONENUMBER:12345
USERNAME:john.doe
EMAIL:jonh.doe@yahoo.com
ADDRESS:somewhere
PHONENUMBER:12345

How do I grep the file so that the output will order the data in the following way:The output from grep should be:
1)USERNAME:john.doe
2)EMAIL:jonh.doe@yahoo.com
3)PHONENUMBER:12345
4)USERNAME:john.doe
5)EMAIL:jonh.doe@yahoo.com
6)PHONENUMBER:12345

[Geoff Wild · Accepted solution]

Use egrep:

egrep "USERNAME|EMAIL|PHONE" file

Rgds...Geoff

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You don't. This isn't a job for grep. This is something that is best tackled with Perl, awk, or sed --- probably in that order of preference although for a novice awk is probably the easist to learn.

[Jeff_Traigle]

It looks like you're just removing the ADDRESS entry so pretty simple:

grep -v "^ADDRESS:" filename

-v prints all lines that don't match the pattern.

^ designates the pattern should be at the beginning of the line.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Filters like 'grep' make one-pass through a file, and hence your output will occur in the order the matches appear in the input source.

You can do:

# grep -e USERNAME -e EMAIL -e PHONENUMBER filename

...and you will see the order you posted as ouput if that's the sequential order of the input file.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Unix or Linux?]

Wow! Thank you for all the replies.

Is there any advantage from using grep -e to using egrep?
How do I number the lines followed by a bracket?

[Chan 007]

Try,

egrep "USERNAME|EMAIL|PHONENUMBER"

Chan

[Geoff Wild]

Chan - that's exactly the same as what I already gave...no need to reiterate it...

0 points for this reply.

Rgds...Geoff

[Jeff_Traigle]

INDEX=1
grep -v "^ADDRESS:" filename | while read LINE
do
echo "${INDEX})${LINE}"
INDEX=$((${INDEX}+1))
done

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

On HP-UX 'grep -E' (uppercase!) provides the same features as 'egrep'.

http://www.docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60103/grep.1.html

Regards!

...JRF...