how to grep for exact word

[Irman Surani]

hi,

i would like to find out if it is possible to use grep to search for exact word in a file.

eg. if i use grep ab filename, it will display ab, abc, abcd, etc. but i only want to search for just ab.

Any advice ? Thanks in advance.

Best Regards,
Irman

[KapilRaj]

grep -w word

kaps

[dsrao]

Hi,

try this

grep -E -l word

bye

[Animesh Chakraborty]

Hi Imran,
Try grep -x "word" filename

[Irman Surani]

hi guys,

tried all the advice but not working. however, i fixed my problem my adding a space behind the word i am searching for, ie. grep "ab " filename.

thanks for the reply.

best regards,
irman

[Heiner E. Lennackers]

You may try this:

egrep "(^|[^a-zA-Z0-9])WORD($|[^a-zA-Z0-9])"
The reverted character class [^.....] should hold all possible character for your WORD. If you use other program (like perl) instead of the unox grep command, there may be abbrevations for this string.

Heiner

[Chia-Wei]

Try adding a space before and after the word you intend to search!

[Chia-Wei]

Try adding a space before and after the word you inted to search!