BASH: Search for several Keywords in file and highlight them

Question

I want to search all files in a directory for a Keyword and color it, like:

grep -n "keyword1" * --color

Now I want to highlight all occurrences of keyword2 and keyword3 in an other color.

I managed

grep -n "keyword1 * |egrep --color "keyword2|keyword3|$'

this will color both last keywords but in the same color. but I fail to set several different colors to work with a coloring from the first grep-statement. I don't know how to set the constant GREP_COLORS correctly

thanks, yes it is a doublicate more or less – meister_reineke May 07 '15 at 14:16 — meister_reineke, May 07 '15 at 14:16

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 07 '15 at 14:16

3

Something like this will do the job:

grep --color=always -n "keyword1" *  | GREP_COLOR='1;30;40'  grep --color keyword2

answered May 07 '15 at 14:16

Arkadiusz Drabczyk

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I needed to understand all options, so that's what I figured it out by now: - --color=always keeps the word highlighted even through piped greps, so if you're looking for 3 or more words you need to set =always to all commands but the last one - GREP_COLOR='1;30' means thickness 1 (bold) and color 30 (black, bad choice if you use a dark background) I know GREP_COLOR can accept even more complex parameters but I just cannot find an exhaustive documentation (+1 to this answer for the good solution btw) – afe Dec 20 '17 at 09:40
It's well documented in `GREP_COLORS` section in `grep man page`. According to the manpage `GREP_COLOR` is `deprecated in favor of GREP_COLORS`. – Arkadiusz Drabczyk Dec 20 '17 at 11:40

BASH: Search for several Keywords in file and highlight them

1 Answers1