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7 Essential grep commands for software engineers

I'd like to share a quick review of 7 essential grep commands that every software engineer should know and use in their daily work.

Commands covered:

Recursive search
Display line numbers
Display filenames
Invert match
Multiple Patterns
Context of matching lines
Use regular expressions

  1. Search for a pattern in all files recursively:
grep -r "pattern" /path/to/directory
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  1. Display line numbers along with matching lines:
grep -n "pattern" filename
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  1. Display only the names of files with matching lines:
grep -l "pattern" *
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  1. Invert match (display non-matching lines):
grep -v "pattern" filename
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  1. Search for multiple patterns:
grep -e "pattern1" -e "pattern2" filename
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  1. Show the context of matching lines (before and after):
grep -C 3 "pattern" filename
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  1. Use regular expressions for complex patterns:
grep -E "pattern1|pattern2" filename
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If you're interested in viewing the examples, feel free to do so. Youtube Link

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