How to grep for the exact word if the string has got dot in it

Question

I was trying to search for a particular word BML.I in a current directory.

When I tried with the below command:

grep -l  "BML.I" *

It is displaying all the results if it contains the word BML

Is it possible to grep for the exact match BML.I

Are you looking for file names or file content? – Alepac Mar 20 '13 at 11:02 — Alepac, Mar 20 '13 at 11:02
@Alepac obviously he's looking for content. – Kent Mar 20 '13 at 11:10 — Kent, Mar 20 '13 at 11:10

Brian Agnew · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-20T11:06:56.547

21

You need to escape the . (period) since by default it matches against any character, and specify -w to match a specific word e.g.

grep -w -l "BML\.I" *

Note there are two levels of escaping in the above. The quotes ensure that the shell passes BML\.I to grep. The \ then escapes the period for grep. If you omit the quotes, then the shell interprets the \ as an escape for the period (and would simply pass the unescaped period to grep)

edited Mar 20 '13 at 11:06

answered Mar 20 '13 at 11:02

Brian Agnew

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You might want single quotes there. – filmor Mar 20 '13 at 11:02
I *might* do, but there are no variables to interpret/expand in the expression – Brian Agnew Mar 20 '13 at 11:07
this will match `fooBML.Ibar` which is not a `particular word "BML.I"` – Kent Mar 20 '13 at 11:08
@Kent - ah. Didn't read the question properly. Now amended. Thx – Brian Agnew Mar 20 '13 at 11:10

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '13 at 11:05

try grep -wF

from man page:

 -w, --word-regexp
                  Select  only  those  lines containing matches that form whole words.  The
                  test is that the matching substring must either be at  the  beginning  of
                  the line, or preceded by a non-word constituent character.  Similarly, it
                  must be either at  the  end  of  the  line  or  followed  by  a  non-word
                  constituent  character.  Word-constituent characters are letters, digits,
                  and the underscore.



 -F, --fixed-strings
              Interpret  PATTERN as a list of fixed strings, separated by newlines, any
              of which is to be matched.  (-F is specified by POSIX.)

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 20 '13 at 11:23

4

I use fgrep, which is the same as grep -F

answered Mar 20 '13 at 11:23

Bryan Oakley

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score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 22 '19 at 09:05

0

Use this command:

ls | grep -x "BML.I"

edited Jul 22 '19 at 09:05

Krzysztof Atłasik

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answered Jul 22 '19 at 06:36

Tharun Ravikumar

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How to grep for the exact word if the string has got dot in it

4 Answers4

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