Highlight text similar to grep, but don't filter out text

linux grep command-line-interface
Martin Konecny picture Martin Konecny · Sep 12, 2011 · Viewed 121.2k times · Source

When using grep, it will highlight any text in a line with a match to your regular expression.

What if I want this behaviour, but have grep print out all lines as well? I came up empty after a quick look through the grep man page.

Answer

holygeek picture holygeek · Sep 13, 2011

Use ack. Checkout its --passthru option here: ack. It has the added benefit of allowing full perl regular expressions.

$ ack --passthru 'pattern1' file_name

$ command_here | ack --passthru 'pattern1'

You can also do it using grep like this:

$ grep --color -E '^|pattern1|pattern2' file_name

$ command_here | grep --color -E '^|pattern1|pattern2'

This will match all lines and highlight the patterns. The ^ matches every start of line, but won't get printed/highlighted since it's not a character.

(Note that most of the setups will use --color by default. You may not need that flag).

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