how to grep on three items

[Klaas Eenkhoorn]

Dear All,

i have a question, i need to grep on three items i a line of a logfile

like:

grep item1 and item2 and item3 /var/log/logfile

One option is to do:

grep item1 logfile | grep item2 | grep item3

but is there a nicer way ?

Kl@@s

[Ivan Ferreira]

I normally use:

egrep "item1|item2|item3" logfile.

[Steven Schweda · Accepted solution]

> but is there a nicer way ?

Almost always. "man grep":

[...]
By default, the grep command treats a pattern as a basic regular expression
(BRE). With the -E option, the pattern is treated as an extended regular
expression (ERE). With the -F option, the pattern is considered a fixed
string. See the following discussion of regular expressions.
[...]

If you know the order of the items:

bash$ echo '11a22b33c44' | grep 'a.*b.*d'
bash$ echo '11a22b33c44' | grep 'a.*b.*c'
11a22b33c44

[Steven Schweda]

> I normally use:
> [...]

Really? For this problem? AND != OR.

[Ivan Ferreira]

You are right Steven. I messed up the question.

egrep -e item1 -e item2 logfile

[Steven Schweda]

> You are right Steven. I messed up the
> question.

Nah. You messed up the _answer_.

> egrep -e item1 -e item2 logfile

Twice.

bash$ echo '11a22b33c44' | egrep -e a -e d
11a22b33c44

Testing is _such_ a bother.

[Ivan Ferreira]

Jajajaj, you are correct, the results of my test where inaccurate.

Shame on me. Ok, last try, but let's avoid grep/egrep =)

awk '/item1/ && /item2/ { print $0 }' logfile

Tested with:

echo 11a22b33c44 | awk '/a/ && /d/ { print $0 }'

[Dennis Handly]

>grep item1 logfile | grep item2 | grep item3
>but is there a nicer way?

This is doing AND. If these items are in that order you can do:
grep "item1.*item2.*item3" logfile

[Dennis Handly]

>if these items are in that order you can do:

Oops, Steven already said that.
You could list all of the orders with -e. :-)

[Klaas Eenkhoorn]

Thanks all for the thinking.

In the meantime i've accepted the solution grep 'a.*b.*d' as for me the best option, but submitting points does not work for me at this moment due to firewall rules or something so this weekend i will do my job to thank you all the propper way!

Again thanks!