SYNOPSIS

       pcregrep [-Vcfhilnrsvx] pattern [file] ...




DESCRIPTION

       pcregrep searches files for  character  patterns,  in  the
       same  way  as other grep commands do, but it uses the PCRE
       regular expression library to support  patterns  that  are
       compatible  with  the  regular  expressions of Perl 5. See
       pcre(3) for a full description of syntax and semantics.

       If no files are specified,  pcregrep  reads  the  standard
       input.  By  default, each line that matches the pattern is
       copied to the standard output, and if there is  more  than
       one  file,  the  file  name is printed before each line of
       output. However, there are options  that  can  change  how
       pcregrep behaves.

       Lines  are limited to BUFSIZ characters. BUFSIZ is defined
       in <stdio.h>.  The newline character is removed  from  the
       end of each line before it is matched against the pattern.




OPTIONS

       -V        Write the version number  of  the  PCRE  library
                 being used to the standard error stream.

       -c        Do  not  print  individual  lines;  instead just
                 print a count of the number of lines that  would
                 otherwise  have  been  printed. If several files
                 are given, a count is printed for each of  them.

       -ffilename
                 Read  patterns  from the file, one per line, and
                 match all patterns against each line. There is a
                 maximum of 100 patterns. Trailing white space is
                 removed, and blank lines are ignored.  An  empty
                 file  contains no patterns and therefore matches
                 nothing.

       -h        Suppress printing of  filenames  when  searching
                 multiple files.

       -i        Ignore upper/lower case distinctions during com­
                 parisons.

       -l        Instead of printing lines from the  files,  just
                 print  the  names  of the files containing lines
                 that would have been printed. Each file name  is
                 which  do not match the pattern are now the ones
                 that are found.

       -x        Force the pattern to be anchored (it must  start
                 matching  at  the  beginning of the line) and in
                 addition, require it to match the  entire  line.
                 This  is equivalent to having ^ and $ characters
                 at the start and end of each alternative  branch
                 in the regular expression.




SEE ALSO

       pcre(3), Perl 5 documentation




DIAGNOSTICS

       Exit  status  is  0  if  any  matches  were found, 1 if no
       matches were found, and 2 for syntax errors or inacessible
       files (even if matches were found).




AUTHOR

       Philip Hazel <ph10@cam.ac.uk>

       Last updated: 15 August 2001
       Copyright (c) 1997-2001 University of Cambridge.



                                                      PCREGREP(1)

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