SED: Number of returned lines

Question

To a file jungle.txt with following text ...

A lion sleeps in the jungle
A lion sleeps tonight
A tiger awakens in the swamp
The parrot observes
Wimoweh, wimoweh, wimoweh, wimoweh

... one could perform GREP search ...

$ grep lion jungle.txt

... or SED search ...

$ sed "/lion/p" jungle.txt

... to find occurences of a pattern ("lion" in this case).

Is there some easy way to get a number of returned lines? Or at least to know that there was more than 1 found? As always, I've googled a lot first, but surprisingly found no answer.

Thanks!

Possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6181324/counting-regex-pattern-matches-in-one-line-using-sed-or-grep — John1024, Aug 31 '14 at 06:47
@John1024: That is the exact replication of my situation. Thank you! — Petr Cibulka, Aug 31 '14 at 06:51

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 31 '14 at 07:55

grep can count matching lines:

grep -c 'lion' file

Output:

Syntax:

-c: Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching lines for each input file. With the -v, --invert-match option (see below), count non-matching lines. (-c is specified by POSIX.)

potong · Answer 2 · 2014-08-31T11:48:55.930

2

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed '/lion/!d' file | sed '$=;d'

or if you prefer:

sed -n '/lion/p' file | sed -n '$='

N.B. if the file is empty or the first sed command finds nothing the result of the second sed command is blank.

edited Aug 31 '14 at 11:48

answered Aug 31 '14 at 08:02

potong

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Jotne · Answer 3 · 2014-09-01T17:57:32.217

2

You can use awk

awk '/lion/ {a++} END {print a+0}'
2

But I would say that the best solution is the one posted by Cyros using grep -c 'lion' file

edited Sep 01 '14 at 17:57

answered Aug 31 '14 at 10:16

Jotne

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You need to make it `print a+0` to get 0 printed instead of a null string if the RE doesn't exist in the file. – Ed Morton Sep 01 '14 at 15:45

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 31 '14 at 06:45

1

Just pass the grep command output to wc- l command to count the number of returned lines,

$ grep 'lion' file | wc -l
2

From wc --help

-l, --lines            print the newline counts

answered Aug 31 '14 at 06:45

Avinash Raj

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Thanks and sorry for missing the obvious! Will accept the answer in 6 minutes when SO let me to do so. :) – Petr Cibulka Aug 31 '14 at 06:51
1

No, just use the `c` option for grep. – Ed Morton Sep 01 '14 at 15:44

SED: Number of returned lines

4 Answers4