grep a filename in a file

[Elliott Moskowitz]

If I want to grep for the characters

$myenv/*.log

in a file a.a and the file a.a has the exact same characters as above, what's the grep command (using csh). Note: $myenv is an environment variable. I tried backslashes, single quotes, double quotes, and combinations.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Elliott,

Try the same in quotes "$myenv/*.log"

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Jeff Machols]

you may need an addition .

grep "$env.*.log" a.a

[harry d brown jr]

grep "\$myenv\/\*\.log" a.a

or if you want to "evaluate" $myenv before doing the grep then:

grep "$myenv\/\*\.log" a.a


live free or die
harry

[Elliott Moskowitz]

Sanjay, Jeff, Harry,

None of your suggestions work, however I think Harry is the closest since a backslash is supposed to stop the special meaning of a character.

[Mark Greene_1]

I couldn't tell which way you were meaning, sorry, so here are two solutions depending on what you are after:

1. if you want to do the variable substitution with the contents of myenv, do this:

eval "grep "$myenv/*.log" a.a"


2. if you are looking for the exact string $myenv, do this:

grep "\$myenv\/\*.log" a.a

HTH
--
mark

[harry d brown jr]

sorry, for csh:

grep '\$myenv\/\*\.log' test


live free or die
harry

[Elliott Moskowitz]

Markm I'm looking for exact strin and I tried your example 2
----
2. if you are looking for the exact string $myenv, do this:
----
grep "\$myenv\/\*.log" a.a


and it didn't return anything. Could you try it under csh ?

[Jeff Machols]

are you trying to evaluate the $myenv, also is the * literally the *, or is that a wildcard?

[harry d brown jr]

Elliot,

replace "test" with "a.a", in my last example.

live free or die
harry

[Elliott Moskowitz]

Jeff,

Everything is literal.

Harry,

Your second response works fine, however I only gave you 7 points because I want to see if there are any other different suggestions.

If you reply again I'll give you your remaining points once I see everyone gives up.

Thanks

[Darrell Allen]

This will work:

grep "\$myenv/\*.log" *

Darrell

[Mark Greene_1]

Elliot,

Harry's last was the correct syntax, I left off the \ before the . in my example sorry. This is what I got to work in csh (did a direct cut-n-paste instead of retyping it):

grep '\$myenv\/\*\.log' a.a

--
mark

[Jeff Machols]

ok, sorry bout that, try this

grep '\$myenv\/\*\.log' a.a

[Jeff Machols]

oops, ignore me, just what harry had with the single quotes, same thing worked for me in C - shell

[Elliott Moskowitz]

Does anyone have a correct reply other than Harry's correct reply ?

[Mark Greene_1 · Accepted solution]

Harry's is the only correct answer. All of the special characters have to be escaped individually as there is no syntax for telling the shell interpreter to treat as non-special all occurances of special characters in a given string--but it would be nice if there was. Maybe like an "uneval" to do the opposite of "eval". :-)

--
mark

[Darrell Allen]

Yep, I was wrong. In sh it found $myenv*.log but it also found $myenv*-log. Further, you asked for csh.

Darn, I hate it when work interrupts me when I'm tring to answer a forums question!

Darrell