Regular expressions are a means of matching a pattern of characters within a string.

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How to block the Google Analytics Script using Privoxy

Related subject: Privoxy: blocking twitter, facebook and google outside of their domains + HTTPS Never mind what rule I am adding to the default.filter file, I don't make it to block these scripts. ...
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Extract IP address from a string

The Linux host command returns: hostA.domain.com has address xx.xxx.xxx.xx How do I get just the IP address and put it in the $ipaddr variable? open(FILE, "hostlist.txt") or die("Unable to open ...
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Using grep to match only a match group in a regular expression?

I need to set my keyboard layout with setxkbmap before launching Wine games, as I use Dvorak for typing and this breaks every game's controls. What I'd like to do is simply write a script that grabs ...
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Match one part of a regular expression in a Kwrite find-and-replace regex

Among the joys of KDE, Kwrite is surely noteworthy. Having regular expression support built in by default into text editor is probably one of the top 10 best ideas of all time. Since I often need to ...
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How do I choose specific files in a different directory using bash?

I want to list (or delete, or do some other operation) on certain files in a directory, like this: $ ls /opt/somedir/ aa bb cc aa.txt bb.txt cc.txt $ ls /opt/somedir/(aa|bb|cc) ## pseudo-bash ...
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Expand regex on multiple lines in Vim

I am working on removing comments from a C source file. Let's focus on multiline comments /* ... */ and ignore the inline ones (//) The following command seems to work with (solaris) sed: ...
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Software for visually building regular expressions?

I frequently need to create regular expressions for use in scripts (mostly when used in sed), however, I find, sometimes the regular expressions get very complicated and difficult for me to understand ...
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How can I match this text in awk, printing line numbers for matches?

I have a text file thousands (roughly 148,000 lines long) that consists of a lot of sequences like this: b 29. b 52. c 84. c 83. c 94. c 93. c 61. b 38. c 81. c 92. c 28. c 37. c 27. ... and since ...
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How can I use sed to replace a multi-line string?

I've noticed that, if I add \n to a patter for a substitute using sed, it does not match. Example: $ cat > alpha.txt This is a test Please do not be alarmed $ sed -i'.original' 's/a test\nPlease ...
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2answers
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How to treat a file as a single line with grep to apply a regexp search pattern?

I want to match everything that is between some lines with regexp but not this that match the start and the end. This sound to me as positive lookbehind and positive lookahead start text bla ...
2
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3answers
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How to cut the output to only gather the filename and get-parameter?

I have multiple files with multiple links that are formatted like this: <a href="http://example.com/fnord.layername.html?parameter=FOO-_-BAR-_-FNORD" class="poit"> <img ... /> ...
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6answers
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Delete lines beginning with #

How do I delete lines beginning with a #, given that there can be whitespace on the left and right of the #? # Master socket provides access to userdb information. It's typically
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1answer
431 views

reference problem in using sed

I'm trying to use sed command to find/replace a pattern in file. It gives: sed: -e expression #1, char 27: invalid reference \1 on `s' command's RHS My command is: sed ...
4
votes
1answer
535 views

How can I match the page break character in a regular expression?

Nano calls it ^L, but of course, typing something like $ grep -v "^\^L" file doesn't work. Its unicode codepoint is 000C. How can I match it in a regular expression?
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2answers
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How to search and replace multiple needles by one word via one expression?

Assume you have a text file: foo fnord bar bizz foo poit And now I would want to replace both "foo" and "bar" into "narf". I know I could use: sed -e 's/foo/narf/g' -e 's/bar/narf/g' fileName ...
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0answers
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How to use regrex with AWK for string replacement in this example? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: How to use regrex with AWK for string replacement in this example? Suppose there is some text from a file: (bookmarks ("Chapter 1 Introduction 1" "#1" ("1.1 Problem ...
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3answers
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How to use regex with AWK for string replacement?

Suppose there is some text from a file: (bookmarks ("Chapter 1 Introduction 1" "#1" ("1.1 Problem Statement and Basic Definitions 23" "#2") ("Exercises 31" "#30") ("Notes and References 42" "#34")) ) ...
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pattern search and display the last occuring pattern?

I have a log file containing startup and shutdown times for everday. I want to see the last pattern pattern for startup and shutdown(which is located at the end of the file being updated everyday). ...
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4answers
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Replacing XML entity values with positive lookaround

I'm trying to do some pretty simple sedding of a file: sed 's:(?<=<Type>)default(?=</Type>):super:' < myfile.xml The concept's pretty simple, using positive lookaround, find the ...
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Using regular expressions with cp

This is a simple question. I'm trying to copy all of the files in the current directory that start with "axis-2" and end with ".jar" into a target directory, let's say it's ~/MyDirectory. My first ...
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votes
3answers
560 views

Regex & Sed/Perl: Match word that ISN'T preceded by another word

I'd like to use sed or perl to replace all occurrences of a word that doesn't have a certain word in front of it. For example, I have a text file that contains a plot of a movie and I want to replace ...
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2answers
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grep caret appears to have no effect

I was under the impression that a caret symbol means "beginning of the line" with Extended POSIX regular expressions. However, when I use it with grep it behaves unexpectedly. #grep --version GNU ...
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3answers
164 views

vim regex not need \ to escape

In Vim is there an option to write regexs in the same style as Awk for example/sp\{0,\}/ Would be /sp{0,}/
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2answers
599 views

simple command to strip header and footer from a file

I want a simple little command to strip an XML-Header and Footer from a file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <conxml> <MsgPain001> ...
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2answers
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Wget - Mirroring a full website with requisites on differents hosts

I am trying to make a full static copy of a wordpress website with wget to be browsed without any network connection (all links and images must be converted). The different requisites for the pages ...
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4answers
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Match regex in ksh

I am looking to do something like this in KSH: if (( $var = (foo|bar)[0-9]*$ )); then print "variable matched regex" fi Is it possible at all? For the record I'm using Ksh Version M-11/16/88i ...
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What does ^> mean in a grep pattern?

What does this command do? grep "<[^>]*>" inuux.xml What is searching for?
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1answer
670 views

What does \bi\b mean in a grep pattern?

What does this command do? grep "\bi\b" linux.txt What is it searching for?
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345 views

Replace a substring of filenames in a directory

There exists a directory, which includes several levels of sub-directories. Under these directories, there are a set of files whose names include a common word, e.g, .cc. How can I replace the .cc ...
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How to use regex as field separator in awk?

I'm trying to use regex as a field seperator in awk. From my reading this seems possible but I can't get the syntax right. rpm -qa | awk '{ 'FS == [0-9]' ; print $1 }' awk: cmd. line:1: { FS awk: ...
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1answer
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How to “grep -v” private/broadcast IPv4 addresses?

time nmap -n -iR 0 -sL | cut -d " " -f 5 | egrep -v "^10.*|^172.[16\-32].*|^192.168.*|^[224\-255].*" > RANDOM-IPS.txt so the important part is: egrep -v ...
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perl regex replacing globally when global not selected

I'm using Ubuntu 11.04 and wrote a small script that searches within text files for certain "tokens" and replaces with some a prewritten snippet from a template file of the same name. The text files ...
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Grep 'OR' regex problem

I am trying to use grep with a regex to find lines in a file that match 1 of 2 possible strings. Here is my grep: $ grep "^ID.*(ETS|FBS)" my_file.txt The above grep returns no results. However if I ...
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1answer
110 views

What special characters does grep parse by default? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: In a regular expression, which characters need escaping? I know there is the -E flag which treats the "search term" as a regular expression. However, it seems that even ...
6
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1answer
363 views

How do you save a complex regex for multiple reuse in sed?

In using sed, I often create rather complicated and intricate regexes that I need to match twice in a file. Is there a way for me to save this regex and just reference it twice? Maybe something that ...
3
votes
3answers
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What does . match?

In working with regular expressions, I have been told that a dot character . will match everything. Except for newlines \n. Are there any other exceptions? What about the NUL character \0, or the ...
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3answers
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In a regular expression, which characters need escaping?

In general, which characters in a regular expression need escaping? For example, the following is not syntactically correct: echo '[]' | grep '[]' grep: Unmatched [ or [^ This, however, is ...
4
votes
1answer
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Substitute text with sed and keep part of the original text

I am trying to convert <id>1</id> <Name>ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING</Name> to: <column name="id">1</column> <column name="Name">ENTERPRISE RESOURCE ...
4
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1answer
507 views

Renaming files to have lower case extensions with 'rename'

I'm trying to currently rename a large set of files and have been using quite kludgy methods to do so, such as: rename 's:(.*)\.MOV:$1.mov:g' *.MOV rename 's:(.*)\.JPG:$1.jpg:g' *.JPG What I'd ...
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3answers
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expr help - managing strings

I need to take text like this: A234321=http://www.google..... a normal URL And pull out only the URL, getting rid of the first part. I think I can use expr to do it, but I can't figure out the ...
5
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1answer
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Why are capital letters included in a range of lower-case letters in an awk regex?

$ echo ABC | awk '$0 ~ /^[a-b]/' ABC $ echo ABC | awk '$0 ~ /^[a-a]/' $ echo ABC | awk '$0 ~ /^a/' $ You see. /[a-b]/ captures A, but /[a-a]/ or /a/ doesn't. Why?
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1answer
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Is there a tool in linux that allows multi-line regex expressions?

I'm wanting to find the results of a multi-line regular expression in linux. I tried grep, but like most linux utilities it's line based. Is there something similar that allows me to search across ...
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1answer
211 views

Regex : all greek letters with 5 unique letters (meaning that each letter only appears once)

Another one I can't seem to solve : all greek letters with 5 unique letters (meaning that each letter only appears once). my solution : egrep '(.)([^/1])([^/1/2])([^/1/2/3])([^/1/2/3/4])' greek.txt ...
2
votes
1answer
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Regex : how to verify that there are 13 greek letters with an odd number of consonants

Another regex that I can't seem to crack :( I tried with egrep '([qwrtzpsdfghjklxcvbnmy]{1})|([qwrtzpsdfghjklxcvbnmy]{3})|([qwrtzpsdfghjklxcvbnmy]{5})|([qwrtzpsdfghjklxcvbnmy]{7})' greek.txt ...
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2answers
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Regex : match 2nd and 3rd character

I was doing some exercises on regular expressions, but I can't seem to be able to crack this one : egrep in a file where the 2nd and 3rd character are the same. I tried : egrep '^..{2}' ...
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4answers
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What is the difference between `grep`, `egrep`, and `fgrep`?

Can any one tell me the technical difference between grep and egrep, and fgrep and provide a suitable example? When do I need to use grep over egrep and vice versa?
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2answers
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How does a shell (bash, for example) expand regular expressions?

Assume that a directory has 100 files starting with the letter 'a'. If I do a grep <some string> a* from the terminal, how will the shell handle this? Will it expand the regular expression, ...
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votes
2answers
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Pattern Matching Exclude Duplicate Characters

Is there a regular expression for the following that matches characters in a character set but only once? In other words, once a character is found, remove it from the set. If grep cannot do this, ...
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3answers
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How to diff files ignoring comments (lines starting with #)?

I've two configuration files, the original from the package manager and a customized one modified by myself. I've added some comments to describe behavior. How can I run diff on the configuration ...
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votes
2answers
502 views

Arithmetic operations in regex

I am using gedit regex plugin (Python style regex). I would like to do some arithmetic operation on a backreference to a group. For example: PART 1 DATA MODELS Chapter 2 Entity-Relationship Model ...