grep for special characters in Unix

unix search grep special-characters
Avinash Sonee picture Avinash Sonee · Sep 12, 2012 · Viewed 314.5k times · Source

I have a log file (application.log) which might contain the following string of normal & special characters on multiple lines:

*^%Q&$*&^@$&*!^@$*&^&^*&^&

I want to search for the line number(s) which contains this special character string.

grep '*^%Q&$*&^@$&*!^@$*&^&^*&^&' application.log

The above command doesn't return any results.

What would be the correct syntax to get the line numbers?

Answer

Prince John Wesley picture Prince John Wesley · Sep 12, 2012

Tell grep to treat your input as fixed string using -F option.

grep -F '*^%Q&$*&^@$&*!^@$*&^&^*&^&' application.log

Option -n is required to get the line number,

grep -Fn '*^%Q&$*&^@$&*!^@$*&^&^*&^&' application.log

Related questions

grep, but only certain file extensions

I am working on writing some scripts to grep certain directories, but these directories contain all sorts of file types. I want to grep just .h and .cpp for now, but maybe a few others in the future. So far …

Read More
Use grep --exclude/--include syntax to not grep through certain files

I'm looking for the string foo= in text files in a directory tree. It's on a common Linux machine, I have bash shell: grep -ircl "foo=" * In the directories are also many binary files which match "foo=". As these results …

Read More
Going to a specific line number using Less in Unix

I have a file that has around million lines. I need to go to line number 320123 to check the data. How do I do that?

Read More