DGREP(1)

💖 DGREP 💖

okay bestie, welcome to dgrep — part of the Debian-goodies docs (that's the manual page you're holding, section 1). she's a lil shell script with main character energy and she's about to make your life SO much easier. grab a boba, sit down, let's go 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

dgrep, degrep, dfgrep, dzgrep — grep through files belonging to an installed Debian package. no cap, that's literally her whole job 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

dgrep [most grep options] pattern package...

dgrep --help

like. pattern first, then the package(s). simple as that ✨

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the tea ☕ — dgrep invokes grep(1) on every single file in one or more installed Debian packages. every one. she's thorough like that.

the way she does it: she passes the package argument(s) over to dglob(1) to get a list of the files in those packages. and for matching the package names themselves, she uses dglob's substring pattern matching — so you don't even gotta type the full name, iykyk 👑

and HERE'S the cute part 🎀 — if you invoke dgrep under a different name, she switches up her whole vibe:

• as degrep → she uses grep(1) with the -E option instead 🔥
• as dfgrep → grep(1) with the -F option, respectfully
• as dzgrep → the command zgrep(1) is used instead of grep(1)

(and the "etc." is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, so just know the pattern holds ✨)

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

dgrep supports most of grep(1)'s options. like, the majority. please go check your grep(1) documentation (the manpage OR the texinfo manual, either one bestie) for a complete listing, because we're not reprinting the whole thing here 💀

only a FEW options are excluded, and that's because they don't conform with the intended behaviour. see the list below 👇

🙈 Options of grep that are not supported by dgrep 🙈

• -r, --recursive, -d recurse, --directories=recurse — nope, not supported 🚫
• -d read, --directories=read — also not supported, sorry babe

so why?? okay so dgrep searches only in the "normal" files of a package. she skips all directories and symlinks. every single one. so obviously the options of grep that are specific to directories just... don't apply? they'd be giving nothing. hence: not supported 💅

lowkey important: if you came here expecting recursion, she's not gonna do it. she said what she said 🎀

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

• Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org> — the original icon 👑
• This manpage was written by Frank Lichtenheld <frank@lichtenheld.de> ✍️

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🌈 COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE 🌈

Copyright (C) 2001 Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org>.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

On Debian systems, a copy of the GNU General Public License version 2 can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2.

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• grep(1)
• zgrep(1)
• dglob(1)
• regex(7)
• dpkg(8)

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and that's the whole page bestie, you ate that 🍓✨ this one came to you courtesy of perl v5.40.1, dated 2025-12-06 — mwah, go grep something iconic 💖🦋🎀