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    A Brief Introduction To Grep, Awk & Sed - Perfect Freeze!

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    This document provides a brief introduction to the grep, awk, and sed command line tools. Grep searches for text patterns in files. Awk is used for text parsing and processing, especially with CSV files. Sed performs text transformations on files or input streams. Examples of basic usages are given for each tool, such as searching/filtering text with grep, extracting and reporting fields with awk, and substituting/deleting text with sed.

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    A Brief Introduction To Grep, Awk & Sed - Perfect Freeze!

    Uploaded by

    srajece
    248 views8 pages
    This document provides a brief introduction to the grep, awk, and sed command line tools. Grep searches for text patterns in files. Awk is used for text parsing and processing, especially with CSV files. Sed performs text transformations on files or input streams. Examples of basic usages are given for each tool, such as searching/filtering text with grep, extracting and reporting fields with awk, and substituting/deleting text with sed.

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    grep command

    Original Title

    A brief introduction to grep, awk & sed - Perfect Freeze!

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    This document provides a brief introduction to the grep, awk, and sed command line tools. Grep searches for text patterns in files. Awk is used for text parsing and processing, especially with CSV files. Sed performs text transformations on files or input streams. Examples of basic usages are given for each tool, such as searching/filtering text with grep, extracting and reporting fields with awk, and substituting/deleting text with sed.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    248 views8 pages

    A Brief Introduction To Grep, Awk & Sed - Perfect Freeze!

    Uploaded by

    srajece
    This document provides a brief introduction to the grep, awk, and sed command line tools. Grep searches for text patterns in files. Awk is used for text parsing and processing, especially with CSV files. Sed performs text transformations on files or input streams. Examples of basic usages are given for each tool, such as searching/filtering text with grep, extracting and reporting fields with awk, and substituting/deleting text with sed.

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    Grep is used for searching and filtering text, awk is used for data extraction and reporting, and sed is used for text transformations. Together they are powerful command line utilities.

    Grep is used for searching and filtering files, awk is used for data extraction and reporting from files, and sed is used for text transformations on files.

    Some common grep commands are -E/-P for extended/perl regex syntax, -n to print line numbers, -o to print only matches, and -v to print non-matching lines.

    3/25/2020 A brief introduction to grep, awk & sed - Perfect Freeze!

    A brief introduction
    to grep, awk & sed
    By Cee on Aug 23, 2016

    grep, awk and sed are three of the most useful command-
    line tools1 in *nix world. And this article will give you a brief
    introduction and basic usages of these three different
    commands.

    grep

    grep (Global Regular Expression Print) is used to search


    for specific terms in a file.

    Different from awk and sed, grep can’t add/modify/remove


    the text in a specific file. But it’s useful when we just want
    to search and filter out matches.

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    3/25/2020 A brief introduction to grep, awk & sed - Perfect Freeze!

    Usage

    • Typical use

    # print every line that contains the word 'test'


    grep 'test' file.txt

    • -E / -P: Use extended / Perl compatible regular


    expression syntax.

    • -n: Show line number before each line.

    • -o: Only show the matching segment of the line.

    • -v: Print all of the lines that DO NOT match the search
    pattern.

    • -c: Show the number of the lines that contains the


    search pattern.

    • -i: Ignore case.

    awk

    awk is a text pattern scanning and processing language,


    which is created by Aho, Weinberger & Kernighan. awk is
    mostly used for data extraction and reporting (dealing with
    .csv files).

    Each awk procedure can be divided into three sections:


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    BEGIN { ... initialization awk commands ...}


    { ... awk commands for each line of the file ...}
    END { ... finalization awk commands ...}

    • Control flow

    if (condition) statement [ else statement ]


    while (condition) statement
    do statement while (condition)
    for (expr1; expr2; expr3) statement
    for (var in array) statement
    break
    continue
    exit [ expression ]

    • Built-in variables

    Variable Meaning

    $0 Current line

    $1 - $n The nth field

    FS Input field separator, default value is “ “

    NF The number of fields/columns

    NR The number of records/rows

    FNR The number of records relative to the current input file

    OFS The output field separator, default value is “ “

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    ORS The output record separator, default value is “\n”

    Usage

    • Typical use

    # print 1st and 4th column


    awk '{print $1, $4}' file.txt

    # same with 'cat file.txt'


    awk '{print $0}' file.txt

    • -F: Set input field sparator

    # print 1st and 4th column separated by ':'


    awk -F: '{print $1, $4}' file.txt
    # or
    awk 'BEGIN {FS = ":"} {print $1, $4}' file.txt

    • Pattern matching

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    # print 2nd column when 1st field is precisely 'test'


    awk '$1 == "test" { print $2 }' file.txt

    # print 2nd column when 1st field contains 'test'


    awk '$1 ~ /test/ { print $2 }' file.txt

    # print 2nd column when 1st field DOES NOT contain 'test'
    awk '$1 !~ /test/ { print $2 }' file.txt

    # print 2nd column when this record contains 'test'


    awk '/test/ { print $2 }' file.txt

    # print 2nd column when this record DOES NOT contain 'test'
    awk '! /test/ { print $2 }' file.txt

    • In-place editing: -i (GNU awk 4.1.0 or later…)

    sed

    sed refers to Stream Editor. It can perform text


    transformations on a given file or an input stream.

    Usage

    • Print a line: p

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    # treat this as using 'grep'


    # same with 'cat file.txt'
    sed '' file.txt

    # print every line that matches the regex pattern


    sed -n '/test/p' file.txt

    # match different patterns


    sed -n '/test1/, /test2/p' file.txt

    • Remove a line: d

    # remove every line that matches the regex pattern


    sed '/test/d' file.txt

    # remove 2nd line


    sed '2d' file.txt

    # remove from 2nd line to the end of the file


    sed '2,$d' file.txt

    • Substitution: s

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    # replace the 1st 'test' with 'text' in each line


    sed 's/test/text/' file.txt

    # replace all 'test' with 'text' in each line


    sed 's/test/text/g' file.txt

    # replace the 2nd 'test' with 'text' in each line


    sed 's/test/text/2' file.txt

    # replace all 'test' from the 2nd to the end of each line with 'tex
    sed 's/test/text/2g' file.txt

    # replace the 'test' in the 2nd line with 'text'


    sed '2s/test/text/g' file.txt

    • Insert & Append a whole line: i & a

    # insert a new line before the 2nd line


    sed '2 i test' file.txt

    # append a new line after the 2nd line


    sed '2 a test' file.txt

    # append a new line after each line that matches the regex pattern
    sed '/test/a test' file.txt

    • Replace a whole line: c

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    # replace the 2nd line with 'test'


    sed '2 c test' file.txt

    # replace each line that matches the regex pattern with 'text'
    sed '/test/c text' file.txt

    • In-place editing: -i

    # make immediate change!


    sed -i 's/test/text/g' file.txt

    Advanced usage - Pattern Space & Hold Space

    (Next article)

    1. grep, awk and sed – three VERY useful command-line utilities


    (http://www-
    users.york.ac.uk/~mijp1/teaching/2nd_year_Comp_Lab/guides/grep_awk_se

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