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Development Tools Introduction to the Terminal Common Commands Other Things to Explore

Swan The Human
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Swan The Human
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 19,338 Points
Posted by Swan The Human
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Swan The Human
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 19,338 Points

About the 'grep' command... How does it determine what a "line" is?

In the example, using the "grep" command while searching for "mac" doesn't show every literal line break on the screen with "mac" in it. How does it determine what a "line" is? Is it by a period? or is it by a certain amount of characters?

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,248 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,248 Points

A "line" in text-based utilities (like "grep") is any number of characters ending in a newline character (\n).

Periods and other punctuation have no special meaning unless they are part of the pattern being searched for.