pcregrep  -  a  grep  with Perl-compatible regular expres­
       sions.


SYNOPSIS

       pcregrep [-Vchilnsvx] pattern [file] ...


DESCRIPTION

       pcregrep searches files for  character  patterns,  in  the
       same  way  as other grep commands do, but it uses the PCRE
       regular expression library to support  patterns  that  are
       compatible  with  the  regular  expressions of Perl 5. See
       pcre(3) for a full description of syntax and semantics.

       If no files are specified,  pcregrep  reads  the  standard
       input.  By  default, each line that matches the pattern is
       copied to the standard output, and if there is  more  than
       one  file,  the  file  name is printed before each line of
       output. However, there are options  that  can  change  how
       pcregrep behaves.

       Lines  are limited to BUFSIZ characters. BUFSIZ is defined
       in <stdio.h>.  The newline character is removed  from  the
       end of each line before it is matched against the pattern.


OPTIONS

       -V        Write the version number  of  the  PCRE  library
                 being used to the standard error stream.

       -c        Do  not  print  individual  lines;  instead just
                 print a count of the number of lines that  would
                 otherwise  have  been  printed. If several files
                 are given, a count is printed for each of  them.

       -h        Suppress  printing  of  filenames when searching
                 multiple files.

       -i        Ignore upper/lower case distinctions during com­
                 parisons.

       -l        Instead  of  printing lines from the files, just
                 print the names of the  files  containing  lines
                 that  would have been printed. Each file name is
                 printed once, on a separate line.

       -n        Precede each line by  its  line  number  in  the
                 file.

       -s        Work  silently,  that is, display nothing except
                 error  messages.   The  exit  status   indicates


       -v        Invert  the  sense  of  the match, so that lines
                 which do not match the pattern are now the  ones
                 that are found.

       -x        Force  the pattern to be anchored (it must start
                 matching at the beginning of the  line)  and  in
                 addition,  require  it to match the entire line.
                 This is equivalent to having ^ and $  characters
                 at  the start and end of each alternative branch
                 in the regular expression.


SEE ALSO

       pcre(3), Perl 5 documentation


DIAGNOSTICS

       Exit status is 0 if  any  matches  were  found,  1  if  no
       matches were found, and 2 for syntax errors or inacessible
       files (even if matches were found).


AUTHOR

       Philip Hazel <ph10@cam.ac.uk>
       Copyright (c) 1997-2000 University of Cambridge.


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