I'm trying to grep a line with a backslash at the end of the line like:
abc\ def ghij ... I hope it can grep the line "abc\". I tried the command below but they didn't work.
grep -EHn "\\$" test_file grep -PHn "\\$" test_file How should I solve this problem? I just don't know the logic of escape character in grep. The expression did work in vim.
3 Answers
grep '\\$' test_file works fine for me on Solaris 9 and Ubuntu 12.04.
Single quotes and double quotes differ in which characters are taken literally or used as escape/special characters.
1I somehow overcame the problem by using below:
grep -Hn "\\\\$" But I'm not sure why four back slash would work here. It just worked.
1From "man grep" command:
-F, --fixed-strings Interpret PATTERNS as fixed strings, not regular expressions.
-o, --only-matching Print only the matched (non-empty) parts of a matching line, with each such part on a separate output line.
Also, you have to surround your target with a single quote mark to capcher the exact character:
input:
$echo " this is a backslash -- > '\' " | grep -oF '\' output:
\ 
