PCREGREP(1)                                                        PCREGREP(1)



NAME
       pcregrep - a grep with Perl-compatible regular expressions.

SYNOPSIS
       pcregrep [-Vcfhilnrsuvx] [long options] [pattern] [file1 file2 ...]


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 pcrepattern for a full description of syntax and  semantics
       of the regular expressions that PCRE supports.

       A pattern must be specified on the command line unless the -f option is
       used (see below).

       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 a number of patterns from the file, one  per  line,  and
                 match  all of them against each line of input. A line is out-
                 put if any of the patterns match it.  When  -f  is  used,  no
                 pattern  is  taken  from  the command line; all arguments are
                 treated as file names. 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 comparisons.

       -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 printed once, on a separate  line.

       -n        Precede each line by its line number in the file.

       -r        If  any  file  is  a directory, recursively scan the files it
                 contains. Without -r a directory is scanned as a normal file.

       -s        Work  silently,  that  is,  display nothing except error mes-
                 sages.  The exit status indicates whether  any  matches  were
                 found.

       -u        Operate  in UTF-8 mode. This option is available only if PCRE
                 has been compiled with UTF-8 support. Both  the  pattern  and
                 each  subject line must be valid strings of UTF-8 characters.

       -v        Invert the sense of the match, so that  lines  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.


LONG OPTIONS

       Long  forms  of all the options are available, as in GNU grep. They are
       shown in the following table:

         -c   --count
         -h   --no-filename
         -i   --ignore-case
         -l   --files-with-matches
         -n   --line-number
         -r   --recursive
         -s   --no-messages
         -u   --utf-8
         -V   --version
         -v   --invert-match
         -x   --line-regex
         -x   --line-regexp

       In addition, --file=filename is equivalent to  -ffilename,  and  --help
       shows the list of options and then exits.


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>
       University Computing Service
       Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.

Last updated: 09 September 2004
Copyright (c) 1997-2004 University of Cambridge.
