grep, etc

[Bill Vermillion]

On Wed, Aug 18 11:38 , Jay R. Ashworth, showing utter disregard for 
spell-checkers gave us this: 

> On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 01:17:23AM -0400, Brian K. White wrote:
> > Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > > On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 11:08:11PM -0400, Brian K. White wrote:
> > >> Fairlight wrote:
> > >>> Sweet.  I should grab that.  :)  Basically a -useful- egrep.  :)
> > >>> Well, egrep is useful, but not as useful as it otherwise could be.
> > >> 
> > >> I'd say the plain old stock sco grep was useful, since it aswered
> > >> the need very directly in one command without especially exotic
> > >> options or a pipeline. Didn't even require the stock egrep let alone
> > >> gnu grep or pcregrep.
> > > 
> > > Well, except that it *didn't* fulfill the requirement of the poster
> > > who started this thread, without a big ungainly pipline wrapped
> > > around it. 
> > 
> > What are you talking about?
> > 
> > The stated request was:
> > 
> > sample data:
> > ISA*00000089** *
> > CLM*inv123456*a*b*c         -213
> > SV1*23456*25*A*B            -214
> > 
> > I want to be able to view a range of lines, ie: from -213 to -216
> > 
> > In what way does this fail to meet that request?
> > grep '-21[3-6]$' file
> 
> Well, in the *exact* instance he used as an example, it would work.

> But what happens if he wants -213 through -226?

grep '-2[12][3-6]$' file  :-)

Those constructions get ugly as they get larger, don't they.

Of course if the target is not of fixed length it fails miserably.

Bill

> There isn't actually, quite enough information about his requirements
> here to design a solution that's guaranteed to work.

How twue!  How vewwy wevvy twue.
			E. Fudd


-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com