Open System Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual (G06.25+, H06.03+)

User Commands (d - f) fgrep(1)
Command Usage
The fgrep command precedes the matched line with the name of the file containing it if you
specify more than one file (except when the -h flag is specified).
Lines are limited to 2048 bytes; longer lines are broken into multiple lines of 2048 or fewer bytes.
Running the fgrep command on a nontext file (for example, an .o file) produces unpredictable
results and is discouraged.
Regular Expressions (REs)
Regular expressions (REs) cannot contain newline characters, because these signal a new pattern.
The following REs match a single character:
character
An ordinary character (one other than one of the special pattern-matching characters)
matches itself.
. A . (dot) matches any single character except the newline character.
[string] A string enclosed in [](brackets) matches any one character in that string. In addition,
certain pattern-matching characters have special meanings within brackets:
^ If the first character of string is a ˆ (circumflex), the RE [ˆstring] matches any
character except the characters in string and the newline character. A ˆ has
this special meaning only if it occurs first in the string.
- You can use a - (dash) to indicate a range of consecutive characters. The char-
acters that fall within a range are determined by the current collating
sequence, which is defined by the LC_COLLATE environment variable. For
example, [a-d] is equivalent to [abcd] in the traditional ASCII collating
sequence.
A range can include a multicharacter collating element enclosed within
bracket-period delimiters ([. .]). The bracket-period delimiters in the RE syn-
tax distinguish multicharacter collating elements from a list of the individual
characters that make up the element.
A collating sequence can define equivalence classes for characters. An
equivalence class is a set of collating elements that all sort to the same primary
location. They are enclosed within bracket-equal delimiters ([= =]). An
equivalence class generally is designed to deal with primary-secondary sort-
ing. For example, if e, è, and ê belong to the same equivalence class, then
[[=e=]fg], [[=è=]fg], and [[=ê=]fg] are each equivalent to [eèêfg].
The - (dash) character loses its special meaning if it occurs first ([-string]), if it
immediately follows an initial circumflex ([ˆ-string]), or if it appears last
([string-]) in the string.
] When the ] (right bracket) is the first character in the string ([]string]) or when
it immediately follows an initial circumflex ([ˆ]string]), it is treated as a part of
the string rather than as the string terminator.
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