how to search the exact word using grep in hpux

[senthil_kumar_1]

Hi

Normally we use below command to find the line containing exact word in linux.

Ex: #grep -w ze4egi /etc/passwd.

But it is not working in hp-ux.

how to solve this?

[Kenan Erdey]

hi,

grep -w also works in hp-ux. what's the problem ?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

What version of HP-UX? The '-w' switch to 'grep' works as "...the matching substring must either be at the beginning of the line, or preceded by a non-word constituent character. Similarly, it must be either at the end of the line or followed by a non-word constituent character. Word-constituent characters are letters, digits, and the underscore."

You can roll-your-own matches with 'grep' with your own regular expresssions and/or extended ones.

Regards!

...JRF...

[senthil_kumar_1]

My HP unix version is 10.20, 11.00 and 11.11.


I am getting following error when running this command.


root@lgapps:/root > grep -w ze4egi /etc/passwd
grep: illegal option -- w
usage: grep [-E|-F] [-c|-l|-q] [-bhinsvx] -e pattern_list...
[-f pattern_file...] [file...]
usage: grep [-E|-F] [-c|-l|-q] [-bhinsvx] [-e pattern_list...]
-f pattern_file... [file...]
usage: grep [-E|-F] [-c|-l|-q] [-bhinsvx] pattern [file...]

[Ganesan R]

Hi,

What is the output you are getting?

Above command syntax suppose to work.

try this if that doesn't work.

#grep -i /etc/passwd

[Sunny123_1]

Hello

Try this


grep -i ze4egi /etc/passwd.

Regards
Sunny

[Ganesan R]

Hi,

-w switch is available with grep in 11.X. Not sure why you are getting illegal option message.

Can you check man grep to find if you have that option or not?

[senthil_kumar_1]

Hi

If use the command

"grep -i ze4egi /etc/passwd"

If getting all the words in output like

wze4egi, ze4egiqwe,

But here i want to search exact word only.

[Sunny123_1]

Hi

Can you try this???

more /etc/passwd |grep "ze4egi"

Regards
Sunny

[johnsonpk · Accepted solution]

Hi Senthil ,

This wont be the answer you asked for ,but if you are dealing with the /etc/password it may help u

if you want to extract by username
grep ^"usename:" /etc/passwd

if you are grepping any other field other than the login shell then

grep ":password:" /etc/passwd

grep ":1021:" /etc/passwd


thanks!!
Johnson

[Shailendran V Naidu]

Try,

grep -c "ze4egi\>" /etc/passwd

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

The '-w' switch isn't/wasn't available in 10.20 or 11.0.

Since you are searching '/etc/passwd' you might anchor your matches with ":" like:

# grep ":ze4egi:" /etc/passwd

Regards!

...JRF...

[mobidyc]

Hello,

You need to use regexp.

you can try:
$ toto=daemon
$ egrep "[^[:alnum:]]$toto[^[:alnum:].]|^$toto[^[:alnum:].]|[^[:alnum:]]$toto$" /etc/passwd
daemon:*:1:5::/:/sbin/sh
$ toto=aemon
$ egrep "[^[:alnum:]]$toto[^[:alnum:].]|^$toto[^[:alnum:].]|[^[:alnum:]]$toto$" /etc/passwd
$

Regards,
Cedrick Gaillard

[mobidyc]

Hello,

if your egrep does not understand [^[:alnum:]] you can replace it with :
[^a-zA-Z0-9]

Cheers,
Cedrick Gaillard

[Suraj K Sankari]

Hi,
See the below link there are so many grep examples are there

http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/sect_04_02.html

Suraj

[Viktor Balogh]

it makes no sense grepping in /etc/passwd for whole words since all the lines are consisting of a single word
(instead of whitespace there is a : between the "words" - the only exception is the gecos field, it can contain whitespaces too...)

if you want to search for a particular user then either

# grep "^username:"

or use the special command pwget:

# pwget -n username

or

# awk -F: '{ if ( $1 == "username" ) print $0 }' /etc/passwd

this will print the whole line from /etc/passwd.

[Viktor Balogh]

sed works too:

# printf '\nthis is a sample\nfor \
> what can be done\nwith sed\n\n'

this is a sample
for what can be done
with sed

# printf '\nthis is a sample\nfor \
> what can be done\nwith sed\n\n' |
> sed -n '/\s*what\s*/p'
for what can be done
#

[Viktor Balogh]

corrected:

sed -n '/\swhat\s/p'

without the stars it match all the words that has whitespace(s) before and after

[Bill Hassell]

> grep: illegal option -- w

I suspect that your man pages do not mention -w either. The -w option was added to 11.00 or 11.11 as a 'funny' patch, that is, there didn't seem to be a grep patch but it was added with something else. grep is telling you that the option does not exist in the (old) version you are using.

As mentioned, the passwd file doesn't have words -- words being defined as text surrounded by white space. If you are searching the GECOS field (the user's name and related information), you need to isolate GECOS with something like awk and then search for words:

awk -F: '{print $5}' /etc/passwd | grep -w ze4egi

This will only work for a grep that has the -w option.