any way we can change the delimiter that uses grep?
I think, by default, grep uses \n as the delimiter.
5 Answers
Replace the zero-delimiter ('@') with a newline (\n) before grep:
cat file | tr '\00' '\n' | grep "search-string"
It you care just about the output, tr might work for you:
che@nok ~ $ grep cpu /proc/cpuinfo | tr '\n' ';' cpu family : 6;cpu MHz : 800.000;cpu cores : 2;cpuid level : 10;cpu family : 6;cpu MHz : 800.000;cpu cores : 2;cpuid level : 10; agrep from the University of Arizona allows you to set the delimiter. It's not a drop-in replacement for grep; it uses a different algorithm (approximate grep, can match up to errors) and has different pattern syntax. But it's a handy tool.
Unfortunately, I think because of licensing issues, there have been multiple similar projects called agrep, and they're not all compatible. But I think all versions allow you to set a delimiter.
case $# in 0|1|2) cat >&2 <<EOF Usage: $0 delimiterstring pattern files.... Behaves like grep -pdelimiterstring but on linux DOES NOT SUPPORT MOST ARGUMENTS unlike grep -p - leaves delimiterstring in output NO -p just the delimeterstring note: delimiterstring has to work in the sed command where the ${d} is if you are going to use @ in the delimeter string, then the @'s need to be replaced by someother character EOF exit 0 ;; 3) mode=one ;; *) mode=many ;; esac d="${1}" p="${2}" shift 2 while [ $# -gt 1 ] do sed "s@${d}@\x00@g" "${1}" | grep -z "${p}" - | ( case $mode in many) sed -e "s@\x00@${d}@g" -e "s@^@${1}: @" ;; *) sed -e "s@\x00@${d}@g" ;; esac ) shift done How's this ? Any use ?
grep file "search-string" |awk 'BEGIN{RS="\n";ORS="@"}{print}' Set '@' to whatever suits your need.
