How to grep excluding some patterns

Question

I d like find lines in files with an occurrence of some pattern and an absence of some other pattern  For example  I need find all files lines including loom except ones with gloom  So  I can find loom with command  grep -n  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp   Now  I want to search loom excluding gloom  However  both of following commands failed  grep -v  gloom  -n  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp  grep -n  loom  -v  gloom    projects    trunk src        h cpp   What should I do to achieve my goal  EDIT 1  I mean that loom and gloom are the character sequences  not necessarily the words   So  I need  for example  bloomberg in the command output and don t need ungloomy  EDIT 2  There is sample of my expectations  Both of following lines are in command output   I faced the icons that loomed through the veil of incense  Arty is slooming in a gloomy day   Both of following lines aren t in command output   It   s gloomyin    ower terrible     great muckle doolders o    cloods  In the south west round of the heigh pyntit hall

User · Answer

A bit old  but oh well     The most up-voted solution from  houbysoft will not work as that will exclude any line with  gloom  in it  even if it has  loom   According to OP s expectations  we need to include lines with  loom   even if they also have  gloom  in them  This line needs to be in the output  Arty is slooming in a gloomy day    but this will be excluded by a chained grep like   grep -n  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp    grep -v  gloom    Instead  the egrep regex example of Bentoy13 works better   egrep       g  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp    as it will include any line with  loom  in it  regardless of whether or not it has  gloom   On the other hand  if it only has gloom  it will not include it  which is precisely the behaviour OP wants

User · Answer

Just use awk  it s much simpler than grep in letting you clearly express compound conditions   If you want to skip lines that contains both loom and gloom   awk   loom   amp  amp    gloom   print FILENAME  FNR   0      projects    trunk src        h cpp    or if you want to print them   awk        g  loom   print FILENAME  FNR   0      projects    trunk src        h cpp    and if the reality is you just want lines where loom appears as a word by itself   awk     lt loom  gt    print FILENAME  FNR   0      projects    trunk src        h cpp

User · Answer

How about just chaining the greps   grep -n  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp    grep -v  gloom

User · Answer

You might be looking something like this   grep -vn  gloom   grep -l  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp     The BACKQUOTES are used like brackets for commands  so in this case with -l enabled  the code in the BACKQUOTES will return you the file names  then with -vn to do what you wanted  have filenames  linenumbers  and also the actual lines    UPDATE Or with xargs  grep -l  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp    xargs grep -vn  gloom    Hope that helps     Please ignore what I ve written above  it s rubbish    grep -n  loom   grep -l  loom  tt4 txt    grep -v  gloom                   this part gets the filenames with  loom   this part gets the lines with  loom                                             this part gets the linenumber                                             filename and actual line

User · Answer

Simply use  grep -v multiple times    Content of file   root server   cat file 1 2 3 4 5   Exclude the line or match   root server   cat file  grep -v 3 1 2 4 5   Exclude the line or match multiple   root server   cat file  grep -v 3  grep -v 5 1 2 4

User · Answer

-v is the  inverted match  flag  so piping is a very good way   grep  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp   grep -v  gloom

User · Answer

You can use grep -P  perl regex  supported negative lookbehind   grep -P     lt  g loom b    projects    trunk src        h cpp    I added  b for word boundaries

User · Answer

grep -n  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp    grep -v  gloom

User · Answer

Question  search for  loom  excluding  gloom    Answer   grep -w  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp

User · Answer

Another solution without chaining grep   egrep       g  loom    projects    trunk src        h cpp    Between brackets  you exclude the character g before any occurrence of loom  unless loom is the first chars of the line

[bash] How to grep, excluding some patterns?

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