Search with grep for two expressions at once

Question

This is basic but I am unable to google it. Can I use on invokation of grep to do

grep expr1 | grep expr2

so that it prints lines including both expr1 and expr2?

Possible duplicate of [How to use grep to match string1 AND string2?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/4487328/608639) — jww, Mar 13 '19 at 04:45

score 46 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 17 '18 at 14:28

46

You can provide several expressions to search for with several -e flags. See also this post.

i.e.

grep -e expr1 -e expr2

edited Apr 17 '18 at 14:28

Ralf Stubner

answered May 09 '14 at 17:51

rounin

@sup: in GNU grep 2.16 the suggested command line searches both expressions – fred Mar 05 '18 at 13:12
5

I am running GNU GREP 2.25 and running `grep --version |grep -e is -e software` does not seem to search for lines containing both exrpresions, but it searches for lines containing either expresion. – sup Mar 05 '18 at 16:46

twm · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-27T16:15:57.990

33

Try this:

grep 'expr1.*expr2\|expr2.*expr1'

That's a little more complicated than it needs to be if you know that "expr2" will always come after "expr1". In that case, you could simplify it to:

grep 'expr1.*expr2'

edited Feb 27 '13 at 16:15

answered Feb 27 '13 at 15:57

twm

Rather than have a lot of identical questions - above worked for me except I did: ` sudo grep -E -rnw '/var/log/' -e 'Out of memory.*Jan 17|Jan 17.*Out of memory'` - without the backslash. Linux Mint 18.3, GNU bash 4.3.48 – nate Jan 17 '18 at 22:50

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 27 '13 at 15:57

3

What you have should work.

The following is an alternative way to achieve the same effect:

grep -E 'expr1.*expr2|expr2.*expr1'

answered Feb 27 '13 at 15:57

NPE

I know it works:-). I was just tired of invoking grep two times all over. But it seems it is quicker to just write grep twice then to type this in. Unfortunately, I often do not know the order of expressions. I was hoping for something like `grep (expr1ANDexpr2)` :-). By the way, is this even faster in a sript than calling grep twice? – sup Feb 27 '13 at 16:02

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 07 '14 at 12:18

1

Actually your own suggestion is nearly correct if you want to get the lines that contain both expressions. Use:

grep expr1 somefile | grep expr2

answered Jul 07 '14 at 12:18

user3728877

1

Oh, I use normally `cat somefile | grep expr1 | grep expr2`, but I think it is not important which software I use to pipe the stuff:-). – sup Jul 13 '14 at 21:48
This will make an "and" instead of the "or" operation, won't it? – Ricard Pérez del Campo Feb 27 '15 at 09:21
You could also use `grep < somefile expr1 | grep expr2`, since we're playing the "how many ways can I do the same thing" game. – Parthian Shot Aug 11 '15 at 20:49
1

@RicardPérezdelCampo The OP wants "and". – Ken Sharp Jun 01 '17 at 10:51

4 Answers4