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Re: how to grep on three items

 
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Klaas Eenkhoorn
New Member

how to grep on three items

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
9 REPLIES 9
Ivan Ferreira
Honored Contributor

Re: how to grep on three items

I normally use:

egrep "item1|item2|item3" logfile.
Por que hacerlo dificil si es posible hacerlo facil? - Why do it the hard way, when you can do it the easy way?
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: how to grep on three items

> 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
Honored Contributor

Re: how to grep on three items

> I normally use:
> [...]

Really? For this problem? AND != OR.
Ivan Ferreira
Honored Contributor

Re: how to grep on three items

You are right Steven. I messed up the question.

egrep -e item1 -e item2 logfile
Por que hacerlo dificil si es posible hacerlo facil? - Why do it the hard way, when you can do it the easy way?
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: how to grep on three items

> 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
Honored Contributor

Re: how to grep on three items

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 }'
Por que hacerlo dificil si es posible hacerlo facil? - Why do it the hard way, when you can do it the easy way?
Dennis Handly
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: how to grep on three items

>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
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: how to grep on three items

>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
New Member

Re: how to grep on three items

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!