Grep string in a file containing colon

Question

I have following string in a multi-line file

.....<other lines>
-classpath "${ROOT}/abcjars/*:${ROOT}/lib/*" \
.....<otherlines>

I want to check if classpath line is present in file or not

If I try following grep command it works properly,

grep '\-classpath \"${ROOT}/abcjars/*' $File

But if I add colon (:) in search pattern it doesn't work

grep '\-classpath \"${ROOT}/abcjars/*:' $File

I want to grep and check if entire line is present or not. Is it possible?

Thanks

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 28 '19 at 19:53

In a regular expressionm, * has special meaning, it means to match the preceding character zero or more times. But in your file you don't have : immediately after a sequence of / (because * is between them), so it's not matching.

You're not doing any regular expression pattern matching, so you should use the -F option to specify that this is a fixed string.

grep -F -e '-classpath "${ROOT}/abcjars/*:' $File

The -e option is needed to allow a search string that begins with -, otherwise the search string is treated as an option.

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 28 '19 at 19:48

1

Use escaping character

grep '\-classpath \"${ROOT}/abcjars/\*:' $File

If still same issue, try using grep regexp flag

edited Oct 28 '19 at 19:48

Barmar

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answered Oct 28 '19 at 19:29

Pradeep G

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1

It's not the colon that needs escaping, it's the asterisk. – Barmar Oct 28 '19 at 19:50
1

There's no need to escape `"`, BTW. – Barmar Oct 28 '19 at 19:50

Grep string in a file containing colon

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