Bash simple search script with individual results

Question

I have a script that searches through a file and displays the results.

However there is a problem for example when i search 1 the following results are given:

1 B C
11 D E
12 B C
13 D E

When i search for 1, I only want it to show the 1 not also

11 D E
12 B C
13 D E

Is this possible?

echo "$@" | sed 's/[[:space:]]/.*/g' | xargs -Ifile grep -Ei 'file' text.txt

Have you tried the `-w` option to `grep`? – Tom Zych Sep 25 '19 at 08:21 — Tom Zych, Sep 25 '19 at 08:21
You can also use `grep '\b1\b'` to set the word boundaries. – sungtm Sep 25 '19 at 08:25 — sungtm, Sep 25 '19 at 08:25

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 25 '19 at 08:22

You can use :

grep -w "1" <filename>

Explaination:

-w, --word-regexp
             The expression is searched for as a word

Output without w:

grep "1" abc.txt 
1
12
13
111
123
312
412

Output with w:

grep -w "1" abc.txt 
1

When content of abc.txt is :

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 25 '19 at 08:33

0

You can use -w flag with grep command. Please check the screenshot below.

answered Sep 25 '19 at 08:33

Harijith R

Is there a way to run this from a script so that i just call the script such as ./script.sh 1 and it does ths. Ive updated the question to show why i use the expression i did. – user3411002 Sep 25 '19 at 08:49

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 25 '19 at 09:15

0

Try this in the script:

grep -o "\b$1\b" <file_name>

Example

vals=1

cat word.txt 
1 B C
11 D E
12 B C
13 D E

grep -o "\b${vals}\b" word.txt 
1

answered Sep 25 '19 at 09:15

sungtm

3 Answers3