doc/html/pcregrep.html

<html>
<head>
<title>pcregrep specification</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB">
<h1>pcregrep man page</h1>
<p>
Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
</p>
<p>
This page is part of the PCRE HTML documentation. It was generated automatically
from the original man page. If there is any nonsense in it, please consult the
man page, in case the conversion went wrong.
<br>
<ul>
<li><a name="TOC1" href="#SEC1">SYNOPSIS</a>
<li><a name="TOC2" href="#SEC2">DESCRIPTION</a>
<li><a name="TOC3" href="#SEC3">OPTIONS</a>
<li><a name="TOC4" href="#SEC4">LONG OPTIONS</a>
<li><a name="TOC5" href="#SEC5">OPTIONS WITH DATA</a>
<li><a name="TOC6" href="#SEC6">DIAGNOSTICS</a>
<li><a name="TOC7" href="#SEC7">AUTHOR</a>
</ul>
<br><a name="SEC1" href="#TOC1">SYNOPSIS</a><br>
<P>
<b>pcregrep [options] [long options] [pattern] [file1 file2 ...]</b>
</P>
<br><a name="SEC2" href="#TOC1">DESCRIPTION</a><br>
<P>
<b>pcregrep</b> 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
<a href="pcrepattern.html"><b>pcrepattern</b></a>
for a full description of syntax and semantics of the regular expressions that
PCRE supports.
</P>
<P>
A pattern must be specified on the command line unless the <b>-f</b> option is
used (see below).
</P>
<P>
If no files are specified, <b>pcregrep</b> reads the standard input. The
standard input can also be referenced by a name consisting of a single hyphen.
For example:
<pre>
  pcregrep some-pattern /file1 - /file3
</pre>
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
<b>pcregrep</b> behaves. In particular, the <b>-M</b> option makes it possible to
search for patterns that span line boundaries.
</P>
<P>
Patterns are limited to 8K or BUFSIZ characters, whichever is the greater.
BUFSIZ is defined in <b>&#60;stdio.h&#62;</b>.
</P>
<br><a name="SEC3" href="#TOC1">OPTIONS</a><br>
<P>
<b>--</b>
This terminate the list of options. It is useful if the next item on the
command line starts with a hyphen, but is not an option.
</P>
<P>
<b>-A</b> <i>number</i>
Print <i>number</i> lines of context after each matching line. If file names
and/or line numbers are being printed, a hyphen separator is used instead of a
colon for the context lines. A line containing "--" is printed between each
group of lines, unless they are in fact contiguous in the input file. The value
of <i>number</i> is expected to be relatively small. However, <b>pcregrep</b>
guarantees to have up to 8K of following text available for context printing.
</P>
<P>
<b>-B</b> <i>number</i>
Print <i>number</i> lines of context before each matching line. If file names
and/or line numbers are being printed, a hyphen separator is used instead of a
colon for the context lines. A line containing "--" is printed between each
group of lines, unless they are in fact contiguous in the input file. The value
of <i>number</i> is expected to be relatively small. However, <b>pcregrep</b>
guarantees to have up to 8K of preceding text available for context printing.
</P>
<P>
<b>-C</b> <i>number</i>
Print <i>number</i> lines of context both before and after each matching line.
This is equivalent to setting both <b>-A</b> and <b>-B</b> to the same value.
</P>
<P>
<b>-c</b>
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.
</P>
<P>
<b>--exclude</b>=<i>pattern</i>
When <b>pcregrep</b> is searching the files in a directory as a consequence of
the <b>-r</b> (recursive search) option, any files whose names match the pattern
are excluded. The pattern is a PCRE regular expression. If a file name matches
both <b>--include</b> and <b>--exclude</b>, it is excluded. There is no short
form for this option.
</P>
<P>
<b>-f</b><i>filename</i>
Read a number of patterns from the file, one per line, and match all of them
against each line of input. A line is output if any of the patterns match it.
When <b>-f</b> 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.
</P>
<P>
<b>-h</b>
Suppress printing of filenames when searching multiple files.
</P>
<P>
<b>-i</b>
Ignore upper/lower case distinctions during comparisons.
</P>
<P>
<b>--include</b>=<i>pattern</i>
When <b>pcregrep</b> is searching the files in a directory as a consequence of
the <b>-r</b> (recursive search) option, only files whose names match the
pattern are included. The pattern is a PCRE regular expression. If a file name
matches both <b>--include</b> and <b>--exclude</b>, it is excluded. There is no
short form for this option.
</P>
<P>
<b>-L</b>
Instead of printing lines from the files, just print the names of the files
that do not contain any lines that would have been printed. Each file name is
printed once, on a separate line.
</P>
<P>
<b>-l</b>
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.
</P>
<P>
<b>--label</b>=<i>name</i>
This option supplies a name to be used for the standard input when file names
are being printed. If not supplied, "(standard input)" is used. There is no
short form for this option.
</P>
<P>
<b>-M</b>
Allow patterns to match more than one line. When this option is given, patterns
may usefully contain literal newline characters and internal occurrences of ^
and $ characters. The output for any one match may consist of more than one
line. When this option is set, the PCRE library is called in "multiline" mode.
There is a limit to the number of lines that can be matched, imposed by the way
that <b>pcregrep</b> buffers the input file as it scans it. However,
<b>pcregrep</b> ensures that at least 8K characters or the rest of the document
(whichever is the shorter) are available for forward matching, and similarly
the previous 8K characters (or all the previous characters, if fewer than 8K)
are guaranteed to be available for lookbehind assertions.
</P>
<P>
<b>-n</b>
Precede each line by its line number in the file.
</P>
<P>
<b>-q</b>
Work quietly, that is, display nothing except error messages.
The exit status indicates whether or not any matches were found.
</P>
<P>
<b>-r</b>
If any given path is a directory, recursively scan the files it contains,
taking note of any <b>--include</b> and <b>--exclude</b> settings. Without
<b>-r</b> a directory is scanned as a normal file.
</P>
<P>
<b>-s</b>
Suppress error messages about non-existent or unreadable files. Such files are
quietly skipped. However, the return code is still 2, even if matches were
found in other files.
</P>
<P>
<b>-u</b>
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.
</P>
<P>
<b>-V</b>
Write the version numbers of <b>pcregrep</b> and the PCRE library that is being
used to the standard error stream.
</P>
<P>
<b>-v</b>
Invert the sense of the match, so that lines which do <i>not</i> match the
pattern are the ones that are found.
</P>
<P>
<b>-w</b>
Force the pattern to match only whole words. This is equivalent to having \b
at the start and end of the pattern.
</P>
<P>
<b>-x</b>
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.
</P>
<br><a name="SEC4" href="#TOC1">LONG OPTIONS</a><br>
<P>
Long forms of all the options are available, as in GNU grep. They are shown in
the following table:
<pre>
  -A   --after-context
  -B   --before-context
  -C   --context
  -c   --count
       --exclude (no short form)
  -f   --file
  -h   --no-filename
       --help (no short form)
  -i   --ignore-case
       --include (no short form)
  -L   --files-without-match
  -l   --files-with-matches
       --label (no short form)
  -n   --line-number
  -r   --recursive
  -q   --quiet
  -s   --no-messages
  -u   --utf-8
  -V   --version
  -v   --invert-match
  -x   --line-regex
  -x   --line-regexp
</PRE>
</P>
<br><a name="SEC5" href="#TOC1">OPTIONS WITH DATA</a><br>
<P>
There are four different ways in which an option with data can be specified.
If a short form option is used, the data may follow immediately, or in the next
command line item. For example:
<pre>
  -f/some/file
  -f /some/file
</pre>
If a long form option is used, the data may appear in the same command line
item, separated by an = character, or it may appear in the next command line
item. For example:
<pre>
  --file=/some/file
  --file /some/file

</PRE>
</P>
<br><a name="SEC6" href="#TOC1">DIAGNOSTICS</a><br>
<P>
Exit status is 0 if any matches were found, 1 if no matches were found, and 2
for syntax errors and non-existent or inacessible files (even if matches were
found in other files). Using the <b>-s</b> option to suppress error messages
about inaccessble files does not affect the return code.
</P>
<br><a name="SEC7" href="#TOC1">AUTHOR</a><br>
<P>
Philip Hazel
<br>
University Computing Service
<br>
Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
</P>
<P>
Last updated: 16 May 2005
<br>
Copyright &copy; 1997-2005 University of Cambridge.
<p>
Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
</p>
1	nigel	63	<html>
2			<head>
3			<title>pcregrep specification</title>
4			</head>
5			<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB">
6	nigel	75	<h1>pcregrep man page</h1>
7			<p>
8			Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
9			</p>
10			<p>
11			This page is part of the PCRE HTML documentation. It was generated automatically
12			from the original man page. If there is any nonsense in it, please consult the
13			man page, in case the conversion went wrong.
14			<br>
15	nigel	63	<ul>
16			<li><a name="TOC1" href="#SEC1">SYNOPSIS</a>
17			<li><a name="TOC2" href="#SEC2">DESCRIPTION</a>
18			<li><a name="TOC3" href="#SEC3">OPTIONS</a>
19			<li><a name="TOC4" href="#SEC4">LONG OPTIONS</a>
20	nigel	77	<li><a name="TOC5" href="#SEC5">OPTIONS WITH DATA</a>
21			<li><a name="TOC6" href="#SEC6">DIAGNOSTICS</a>
22			<li><a name="TOC7" href="#SEC7">AUTHOR</a>
23	nigel	63	</ul>
24			<br><a name="SEC1" href="#TOC1">SYNOPSIS</a><br>
25			<P>
26	nigel	77	<b>pcregrep [options] [long options] [pattern] [file1 file2 ...]</b>
27	nigel	63	</P>
28			<br><a name="SEC2" href="#TOC1">DESCRIPTION</a><br>
29			<P>
30			<b>pcregrep</b> searches files for character patterns, in the same way as other
31			grep commands do, but it uses the PCRE regular expression library to support
32			patterns that are compatible with the regular expressions of Perl 5. See
33			<a href="pcrepattern.html"><b>pcrepattern</b></a>
34			for a full description of syntax and semantics of the regular expressions that
35			PCRE supports.
36			</P>
37			<P>
38			A pattern must be specified on the command line unless the <b>-f</b> option is
39			used (see below).
40			</P>
41			<P>
42	nigel	77	If no files are specified, <b>pcregrep</b> reads the standard input. The
43			standard input can also be referenced by a name consisting of a single hyphen.
44			For example:
45			<pre>
46			pcregrep some-pattern /file1 - /file3
47			</pre>
48			By default, each line that matches the pattern is copied to the standard
49			output, and if there is more than one file, the file name is printed before
50			each line of output. However, there are options that can change how
51			<b>pcregrep</b> behaves. In particular, the <b>-M</b> option makes it possible to
52			search for patterns that span line boundaries.
53	nigel	63	</P>
54			<P>
55	nigel	77	Patterns are limited to 8K or BUFSIZ characters, whichever is the greater.
56			BUFSIZ is defined in <b><stdio.h></b>.
57	nigel	63	</P>
58			<br><a name="SEC3" href="#TOC1">OPTIONS</a><br>
59			<P>
60	nigel	77	<b>--</b>
61			This terminate the list of options. It is useful if the next item on the
62			command line starts with a hyphen, but is not an option.
63	nigel	63	</P>
64			<P>
65	nigel	77	<b>-A</b> <i>number</i>
66			Print <i>number</i> lines of context after each matching line. If file names
67			and/or line numbers are being printed, a hyphen separator is used instead of a
68			colon for the context lines. A line containing "--" is printed between each
69			group of lines, unless they are in fact contiguous in the input file. The value
70			of <i>number</i> is expected to be relatively small. However, <b>pcregrep</b>
71			guarantees to have up to 8K of following text available for context printing.
72			</P>
73			<P>
74			<b>-B</b> <i>number</i>
75			Print <i>number</i> lines of context before each matching line. If file names
76			and/or line numbers are being printed, a hyphen separator is used instead of a
77			colon for the context lines. A line containing "--" is printed between each
78			group of lines, unless they are in fact contiguous in the input file. The value
79			of <i>number</i> is expected to be relatively small. However, <b>pcregrep</b>
80			guarantees to have up to 8K of preceding text available for context printing.
81			</P>
82			<P>
83			<b>-C</b> <i>number</i>
84			Print <i>number</i> lines of context both before and after each matching line.
85			This is equivalent to setting both <b>-A</b> and <b>-B</b> to the same value.
86			</P>
87			<P>
88	nigel	63	<b>-c</b>
89			Do not print individual lines; instead just print a count of the number of
90			lines that would otherwise have been printed. If several files are given, a
91			count is printed for each of them.
92			</P>
93			<P>
94	nigel	77	<b>--exclude</b>=<i>pattern</i>
95			When <b>pcregrep</b> is searching the files in a directory as a consequence of
96			the <b>-r</b> (recursive search) option, any files whose names match the pattern
97			are excluded. The pattern is a PCRE regular expression. If a file name matches
98			both <b>--include</b> and <b>--exclude</b>, it is excluded. There is no short
99			form for this option.
100			</P>
101			<P>
102	nigel	63	<b>-f</b><i>filename</i>
103			Read a number of patterns from the file, one per line, and match all of them
104			against each line of input. A line is output if any of the patterns match it.
105			When <b>-f</b> is used, no pattern is taken from the command line; all arguments
106			are treated as file names. There is a maximum of 100 patterns. Trailing white
107			space is removed, and blank lines are ignored. An empty file contains no
108			patterns and therefore matches nothing.
109			</P>
110			<P>
111			<b>-h</b>
112			Suppress printing of filenames when searching multiple files.
113			</P>
114			<P>
115			<b>-i</b>
116			Ignore upper/lower case distinctions during comparisons.
117			</P>
118			<P>
119	nigel	77	<b>--include</b>=<i>pattern</i>
120			When <b>pcregrep</b> is searching the files in a directory as a consequence of
121			the <b>-r</b> (recursive search) option, only files whose names match the
122			pattern are included. The pattern is a PCRE regular expression. If a file name
123			matches both <b>--include</b> and <b>--exclude</b>, it is excluded. There is no
124			short form for this option.
125			</P>
126			<P>
127			<b>-L</b>
128			Instead of printing lines from the files, just print the names of the files
129			that do not contain any lines that would have been printed. Each file name is
130			printed once, on a separate line.
131			</P>
132			<P>
133	nigel	63	<b>-l</b>
134			Instead of printing lines from the files, just print the names of the files
135			containing lines that would have been printed. Each file name is printed
136			once, on a separate line.
137			</P>
138			<P>
139	nigel	77	<b>--label</b>=<i>name</i>
140			This option supplies a name to be used for the standard input when file names
141			are being printed. If not supplied, "(standard input)" is used. There is no
142			short form for this option.
143			</P>
144			<P>
145			<b>-M</b>
146			Allow patterns to match more than one line. When this option is given, patterns
147			may usefully contain literal newline characters and internal occurrences of ^
148			and $ characters. The output for any one match may consist of more than one
149			line. When this option is set, the PCRE library is called in "multiline" mode.
150			There is a limit to the number of lines that can be matched, imposed by the way
151			that <b>pcregrep</b> buffers the input file as it scans it. However,
152			<b>pcregrep</b> ensures that at least 8K characters or the rest of the document
153			(whichever is the shorter) are available for forward matching, and similarly
154			the previous 8K characters (or all the previous characters, if fewer than 8K)
155			are guaranteed to be available for lookbehind assertions.
156			</P>
157			<P>
158	nigel	63	<b>-n</b>
159			Precede each line by its line number in the file.
160			</P>
161			<P>
162	nigel	77	<b>-q</b>
163			Work quietly, that is, display nothing except error messages.
164			The exit status indicates whether or not any matches were found.
165			</P>
166			<P>
167	nigel	63	<b>-r</b>
168	nigel	77	If any given path is a directory, recursively scan the files it contains,
169			taking note of any <b>--include</b> and <b>--exclude</b> settings. Without
170	nigel	63	<b>-r</b> a directory is scanned as a normal file.
171			</P>
172			<P>
173			<b>-s</b>
174	nigel	77	Suppress error messages about non-existent or unreadable files. Such files are
175			quietly skipped. However, the return code is still 2, even if matches were
176			found in other files.
177	nigel	63	</P>
178			<P>
179			<b>-u</b>
180			Operate in UTF-8 mode. This option is available only if PCRE has been compiled
181	nigel	75	with UTF-8 support. Both the pattern and each subject line must be valid
182			strings of UTF-8 characters.
183	nigel	63	</P>
184			<P>
185	nigel	77	<b>-V</b>
186			Write the version numbers of <b>pcregrep</b> and the PCRE library that is being
187			used to the standard error stream.
188			</P>
189			<P>
190	nigel	63	<b>-v</b>
191			Invert the sense of the match, so that lines which do <i>not</i> match the
192	nigel	77	pattern are the ones that are found.
193	nigel	63	</P>
194			<P>
195	nigel	77	<b>-w</b>
196			Force the pattern to match only whole words. This is equivalent to having \b
197			at the start and end of the pattern.
198			</P>
199			<P>
200	nigel	63	<b>-x</b>
201			Force the pattern to be anchored (it must start matching at the beginning of
202			the line) and in addition, require it to match the entire line. This is
203			equivalent to having ^ and $ characters at the start and end of each
204			alternative branch in the regular expression.
205			</P>
206			<br><a name="SEC4" href="#TOC1">LONG OPTIONS</a><br>
207			<P>
208			Long forms of all the options are available, as in GNU grep. They are shown in
209			the following table:
210			<pre>
211	nigel	77	-A --after-context
212			-B --before-context
213			-C --context
214	nigel	63	-c --count
215	nigel	77	--exclude (no short form)
216			-f --file
217	nigel	63	-h --no-filename
218	nigel	77	--help (no short form)
219	nigel	63	-i --ignore-case
220	nigel	77	--include (no short form)
221			-L --files-without-match
222	nigel	63	-l --files-with-matches
223	nigel	77	--label (no short form)
224	nigel	63	-n --line-number
225			-r --recursive
226	nigel	77	-q --quiet
227	nigel	63	-s --no-messages
228			-u --utf-8
229			-V --version
230			-v --invert-match
231			-x --line-regex
232			-x --line-regexp
233	nigel	77	</PRE>
234			</P>
235			<br><a name="SEC5" href="#TOC1">OPTIONS WITH DATA</a><br>
236			<P>
237			There are four different ways in which an option with data can be specified.
238			If a short form option is used, the data may follow immediately, or in the next
239			command line item. For example:
240			<pre>
241			-f/some/file
242			-f /some/file
243	nigel	75	</pre>
244	nigel	77	If a long form option is used, the data may appear in the same command line
245			item, separated by an = character, or it may appear in the next command line
246			item. For example:
247			<pre>
248			--file=/some/file
249			--file /some/file
250
251			</PRE>
252	nigel	63	</P>
253	nigel	77	<br><a name="SEC6" href="#TOC1">DIAGNOSTICS</a><br>
254	nigel	63	<P>
255			Exit status is 0 if any matches were found, 1 if no matches were found, and 2
256	nigel	77	for syntax errors and non-existent or inacessible files (even if matches were
257			found in other files). Using the <b>-s</b> option to suppress error messages
258			about inaccessble files does not affect the return code.
259	nigel	63	</P>
260	nigel	77	<br><a name="SEC7" href="#TOC1">AUTHOR</a><br>
261	nigel	63	<P>
262	nigel	77	Philip Hazel
263	nigel	63	<br>
264			University Computing Service
265			<br>
266			Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
267			</P>
268			<P>
269	nigel	77	Last updated: 16 May 2005
270	nigel	63	<br>
271	nigel	77	Copyright © 1997-2005 University of Cambridge.
272	nigel	75	<p>
273			Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
274			</p>