I need to return results for two different matches from a single file.
grep "string1" my.file
correctly returns the single instance of string1 in my.file
grep "string2" my.file
correctly returns the single instance of string2 in my.file
but
grep "string1|string2" my.file
returns nothing
in regex test apps that syntax is correct, so why does it not work for grep in cygwin ?
Using the |
character without escaping it in a basic regular expression will only match the |
literal. For instance, if you have a file with contents
string1 string2 string1|string2
Using grep "string1|string2" my.file
will only match the last line
$ grep "string1|string2" my.file string1|string2
In order to use the alternation operator |
, you could:
Use a basic regular expression (just grep
) and escape the |
character in the regular expression
grep "string1\|string2" my.file
Use an extended regular expression with egrep
or grep -E
, as Julian already pointed out in his answer
grep -E "string1|string2" my.file
If it is two different patterns that you want to match, you could also specify them separately in -e
options:
grep -e "string1" -e "string2" my.file
You might find the following sections of the grep
reference useful:
-e
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