MATCH(1L)

💖 NAME 💖

okay bestie, this page is for match from Schily´s USER COMMANDS — yes, that’s MATCH(1L) in the house 💅 — and it searches for patterns in files. lowkey iconic.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

match [ -option ] pattern [ file ...  ]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So match searches the named files — or standard input if you don’t give any filenames — for occurrences of the given pattern on each line. It accepts literal characters or special pattern matching characters. Every line that matches the pattern gets output on standard output. ✨

You can only specify one pattern string for each match, but bestie, you can construct an arbitrarily complex string. When you do not specify a file, match can be used as a filter to display desired lines. Standard in is used if no files are specified. fr fr.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -not, -v — prints all lines that do not match.
• -i — ignore the case of letters.
• -m — force not to use the magic mode.
• -w — search for the pattern as a word.
• -x — display only those lines which match exactly.
• -c — display matching count for each file.
• -l — display name of each file which matches.
• -s — be silent, and indicate a match in the exit code.
• -h — do not display filenames.
• -n — precede matching lines with line number (with respect to the input file).
• -b — precede matching lines with block number.

🦋 REGULAR EXPRESSIONS 🦋

Here’s the full list of all the pattern matching characters, bestie — no skips, no crumbs:

• c — an ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) is a one character regular expression that matches that character.
• \c — a backslash (\) followed by any special character is a one character regular expression that matches the special character itself. The special characters are: ! # % * { } [ ] \ ? ^ $
• ! — logical OR, as in match this!that!the_other. You may have to use {} for precedence grouping.
• # — a hash mark followed by any regular expression matches any number (including zero) occurrences of the regular expression.
• ? — matches exactly any one character. W? matches Wa, Wb, Wc, W1, W2, W3 ...
• * — matches any number of any character.
• % — matches exactly nothing. It can be used in groups of ored patterns to specify that an empty alternative is possible.
• {} — curly brackets may be used to enclose patterns to specify a precedence grouping, and may be nested. {%!{test}}version matches the strings testversion and version.
• [string] — a non empty string of characters enclosed in square brackets is a one character regular expression that matches any one character in that string. If however the first character of the string is a circumflex (^), the one character expression matches any character which is not in the string. The ^ has this special meaning only if it occurs first in the string. The minus (-) may be used to indicate a range of consecutive ASCII characters; for example, [0-9] is equivalent to any one of the digits. The - loses it’s special meaning if it occurs first (after an initial ^, if any) or last in the string. The right square bracket (]) and the backslash (\) must be quoted with a backslash if you want to use it within the string.
• ^ — matches the beginning of a line.
• $ — matches the end of a line. (^*$ matches any entire line)

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

No examples are listed in the original page. it’s giving mysterious. 🫶

🍓 FILES 🍓

None.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• grep(1)
• fgrep(1)
• egrep(1)

💀 DIAGNOSTICS 💀

No diagnostics are listed in the original page.

🧚 NOTES 🧚

Even if a match occurs more than once per line, the line is output only once. periodt.

Quote special pattern matching characters to prevent them from being expanded by the Command Interpreter.

🙈 BUGS 🙈

The length of the pattern is currently limited to 100 characters. 😭

This limit is reduced by 38 if the -w option is used.

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okay that’s the whole vibe — this page is MATCH(1L) from Schily´s USER COMMANDS, written by Joerg Schilling, dated 15. Juli 1988. bye bestie! 💖