grep : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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grep

Grep is a Unix command that searches files for lines matching a regular expression. It comes from syntax usage for the Unix qed/ed editor subcommand: "g/re/p", where 're' means regular expression, 'g' means globally search, and 'p' means print the lines that contain matches. There are other Unix variants:

fgrep - searches for fixed strings only
egrep - capable of extended regular expressions

The word grep has entered the language an a generic verb to mean “search for in multiple files, using a regex if necessary”.

regex
regular expressions
Search and Replace

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