grep question

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On 18 Apr 2003, at 4:37pm, jeff.macdonald at virtualbuilder.com wrote:
> How can I grep for \tfoobar\t?

  If you're using Bash, and it is an interactive shell, use single-quotes
and do a literal insert of a tab character by pressing [CTRL]+[V] followed
by [TAB].  The command will look like

	grep '        foobar        ' file

  If you are in a script file, use your editor to insert a literal character
in the script file.

  If you find the concept of inserting a literal tab character distasteful, 
you can use Perl (or pcregrep(1), if you have it):

	perl -ne 'print if m/\tfoobar\t/;' < file

	pcregrep '\tfoobar\t' file

  This is how I do it.  There may be better ways.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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