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Discussion on: Seeing Context with `grep`

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learnbyexample profile image
Sundeep • Edited

Nicely presented!

Suggestion: as a good practice, always use single quotes unless you need double quotes (you've mixed it up in the article)

With GNU grep, you have two options to control how to separate different matching groups: --no-group-separator and --group-separator (see my tutorial for details)

As pointed by others, ripgrep has --passthru option to show entire input file instead of using regex trick. You can also use -E '^|pattern' or -E 'pattern|$' instead of -e option. always color option is useful to highlight multiple terms in different color, see stackoverflow.com/questions/172360... for example

For those interested in detailed learning of GNU grep and ripgrep, I have a book on that: github.com/learnbyexample/learn_gn... (I had a free offer running, but that ended yesterday, bad timing)

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rpalo profile image
Ryan Palo

Very helpful, thanks! I appreciate the input from someone who literally wrote the book.

The —always tip is especially good, because I was not sure that there was ever a good reason for that option. The -e choice of syntax was deliberate, as I think it gives an ever so slight readability boost over the more opaque regex syntax for showing separate patterns, but showing folks that the extended regex flag is available is a good tip. Thanks again!