Grep Quick Reference
Grep Quick Reference
A quick reference for some handy grep statements.
The idea here is to be able to highlight a line in your IDE and execute it directly in a shell session. This saves some time trying to remember how to construct a particular command, and can be useful if you keep your development notes open in your IDE. For example, you could quickly search for a grep pattern you remember using before, and execute it with <shift><ctrl><b>.
To set this up in IntelliJ family IDEs:
* Create a runner script, e.g. command_runner.sh which can execute supplied commands (see example below)
* Configure an External Tool in Settings:
* Give it a name like “Execute with Bash”
* Set the Program to your command_runner.sh
* Set the Arguments to $SelectedText$
* Set the Working Directory to $ProjectFileDir$
* Optionally assign a keyboard shortcut
This example simplified command runner script will pass the $SelectedText$ to bash:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
eval "$@"
| Description | Command |
|---|---|
| Show 2 lines of context before and after a matched line | grep -ir -C2 ‘word’ * |
| Show the line number | grep -n ‘word’ * |
| Print file names only, containing the pattern | grep -ir -l ‘word’ * |
| Grep only in filenames with a particular extension | grep -ir –include=*.md ‘word’ |
| Exclude files with a particular extension | grep -ir –exclude=*.md ‘word’ |
Recursive grep, searching for patterns in patterns.txt |
find . -name *.md -exec | grep -Hn -f patterns.txt {} ; |
Recursive grep for word in all .md files |
find . -name *.md | -exec grep -Hn ‘word’ {} ; |
Count total occurences of word, including cases when a line contains multiple occurences |
grep -oir ‘word’ * | wc -l |
Grep multiple strings with the --perl-regexp option |
grep -r –perl-regexp ‘hello|goodbye’ * |
Count total occurences of word, including cases when a line contains multiple occurences |
grep -oir ‘word’ * | wc -l |
Grep multiple strings with the --perl-regexp option |
grep -r –perl-regexp ‘hello|goodbye’ * |
(note | is escaped as | in the source of the table above).