How to make grep only match if the entire line matches

Question

I have these     cat a tmp ABB log ABB log 122 ABB log 123   I wanted to find a exact match of ABB log    But when I did     grep -w ABB log a tmp ABB log ABB log 122 ABB log 123   it shows all of them   Can I get what I wanted using grep

User · Answer

similarly with awk   awk    ABB  log    file

User · Answer

grep -Fx ABB log a tmp   From the grep man page      -F  --fixed-strings   Interpret PATTERN as a  list of  fixed strings   -x  --line-regexp   Select only those matches that exactly match the whole line

User · Answer

Simply specify the regexp anchors   grep   ABB  log   a tmp

User · Answer

I intend to add some extra explanation regarding the attempts of OP and other answers as well   You can use John Kugelmans  solution like this too   grep -x  ABB  log  a tmp   quoting the string and escaping the dot     makes it to not need the -F flag any more   You need to escape the    dot   because it matches any character  not only    if not escaped  or use the -F flag with grep  -F flag makes it a fixed string  not a regex    If you don t quote the string  you may need double backslash to escape the dot       grep -x ABB   log a tmp    Test     echo  ABBElog  grep -x  ABB log ABBElog  matched       echo  ABBElog  grep -x   ABB  log   returns empty string  no match    Note     -x forces to match the whole line  Answers using a non escaped   without -F flag are wrong  You can avoid -x switch by wrapping your pattern string with   and    In this case make sure you don t use -F  instead escape the    because -F will prevent the regex interpretation of   and       EDIT   Adding extra explanation in regards of  hakre     If you want to match a string starting with -  then you should use -- with grep  Whatever follows -- will be taken as an input  not option    Example   echo -f  grep --  -f        where grep  -f  will show error echo -f  grep -F --  -f     whre grep -F  -f  will show error grep  pat  --  -file        grep  pat   -file  won t work  -file is the filename

User · Answer

This is with HPUX  if the content of the files has space between words  use this    egrep     space   ABC  log   space     a tmp

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Works for me   grep   bsearch word b  text file  gt  output txt      b indicates sets boundaries   Seems to work pretty fast

User · Answer

cat venky     ABB log     ABB log 122     ABB log 123        cat venky   grep  ABB log    grep -v  ABB log        ABB log              cat venky   grep  ABB log 122    grep -v  ABB log 122        ABB log 122

User · Answer

Here is what I do  though using anchors is the best way   grep -w  ABB log   a tmp

User · Answer

Most suggestions will fail if there so much as a single leading or trailing space  which would matter if the file is being edited by hand  This would make it less susceptible in that case   grep      blank    ABB  log   blank       a tmp   A simple while-read loop in shell would do this implicitly   while read file do    case  file in      ABB log  printf   s n    file    esac done  lt  a tmp

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I d prefer   str  ABB log   grep -E     str    a tmp   cheers

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I needed this feature  but also wanted to make sure I did not return lines with a prefix before the ABB log    ABB log ABB log 122 ABB log 123 123ABB log     grep   WABB log   -w a tmp

User · Answer

This worked well for me when trying to do something similar   grep -F ABB log a tmp

[shell] How to make grep only match if the entire line matches?

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