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<h1>pcre2grep man page</h1>

Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE2 index page</a>.


This page is part of the PCRE2 HTML documentation. It was generated
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please consult the man page, in case the conversion went wrong.
 
<ul>
<li><a name="TOC1" href="#SEC1">SYNOPSIS</a>
<li><a name="TOC2" href="#SEC2">DESCRIPTION</a>
<li><a name="TOC3" href="#SEC3">SUPPORT FOR COMPRESSED FILES</a>
<li><a name="TOC4" href="#SEC4">BINARY FILES</a>
<li><a name="TOC5" href="#SEC5">BINARY ZEROS IN PATTERNS</a>
<li><a name="TOC6" href="#SEC6">OPTIONS</a>
<li><a name="TOC7" href="#SEC7">ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES</a>
<li><a name="TOC8" href="#SEC8">NEWLINES</a>
<li><a name="TOC9" href="#SEC9">OPTIONS COMPATIBILITY</a>
<li><a name="TOC10" href="#SEC10">OPTIONS WITH DATA</a>
<li><a name="TOC11" href="#SEC11">USING PCRE2'S CALLOUT FACILITY</a>
<li><a name="TOC12" href="#SEC12">MATCHING ERRORS</a>
<li><a name="TOC13" href="#SEC13">DIAGNOSTICS</a>
<li><a name="TOC14" href="#SEC14">SEE ALSO</a>
<li><a name="TOC15" href="#SEC15">AUTHOR</a>
<li><a name="TOC16" href="#SEC16">REVISION</a>
</ul>
 <a name="SEC1" href="#TOC1">SYNOPSIS</a> 

pcre2grep [options] [long options] [pattern] [path1 path2 ...]

 <a name="SEC2" href="#TOC1">DESCRIPTION</a> 

pcre2grep searches files for character patterns, in the same way as other
grep commands do, but it uses the PCRE2 regular expression library to support
patterns that are compatible with the regular expressions of Perl 5. See
<a href="pcre2syntax.html">pcre2syntax(3)</a>
for a quick-reference summary of pattern syntax, or
<a href="pcre2pattern.html">pcre2pattern(3)</a>
for a full description of the syntax and semantics of the regular expressions
that PCRE2 supports.


Patterns, whether supplied on the command line or in a separate file, are given
without delimiters. For example:
<pre>
 pcre2grep Thursday /etc/motd
</pre>
If you attempt to use delimiters (for example, by surrounding a pattern with
slashes, as is common in Perl scripts), they are interpreted as part of the
pattern. Quotes can of course be used to delimit patterns on the command line
because they are interpreted by the shell, and indeed quotes are required if a
pattern contains white space or shell metacharacters.


The first argument that follows any option settings is treated as the single
pattern to be matched when neither -e nor -f is present.
Conversely, when one or both of these options are used to specify patterns, all
arguments are treated as path names. At least one of -e, -f, or an
argument pattern must be provided.


If no files are specified, pcre2grep reads the standard input. The
standard input can also be referenced by a name consisting of a single hyphen.
For example:
<pre>
 pcre2grep some-pattern file1 - file3
</pre>
Input files are searched line by line. By default, each line that matches a
pattern is copied to the standard output, and if there is more than one file,
the file name is output at the start of each line, followed by a colon.
However, there are options that can change how pcre2grep behaves. In
particular, the -M option makes it possible to search for strings that
span line boundaries. What defines a line boundary is controlled by the
-N (--newline) option.


The amount of memory used for buffering files that are being scanned is
controlled by parameters that can be set by the --buffer-size and
--max-buffer-size options. The first of these sets the size of buffer
that is obtained at the start of processing. If an input file contains very
long lines, a larger buffer may be needed; this is handled by automatically
extending the buffer, up to the limit specified by --max-buffer-size. The
default values for these parameters can be set when pcre2grep is
built; if nothing is specified, the defaults are set to 20KiB and 1MiB
respectively. An error occurs if a line is too long and the buffer can no
longer be expanded.


The block of memory that is actually used is three times the "buffer size", to
allow for buffering "before" and "after" lines. If the buffer size is too
small, fewer than requested "before" and "after" lines may be output.


Patterns can be no longer than 8KiB or BUFSIZ bytes, whichever is the greater.
BUFSIZ is defined in &#60;stdio.h&#62;. When there is more than one pattern
(specified by the use of -e and/or -f), each pattern is applied to
each line in the order in which they are defined, except that all the -e
patterns are tried before the -f patterns.


By default, as soon as one pattern matches a line, no further patterns are
considered. However, if --colour (or --color) is used to colour the
matching substrings, or if --only-matching, --file-offsets, or
--line-offsets is used to output only the part of the line that matched
(either shown literally, or as an offset), scanning resumes immediately
following the match, so that further matches on the same line can be found. If
there are multiple patterns, they are all tried on the remainder of the line,
but patterns that follow the one that matched are not tried on the earlier part
of the line.


This behaviour means that the order in which multiple patterns are specified
can affect the output when one of the above options is used. This is no longer
the same behaviour as GNU grep, which now manages to display earlier matches
for later patterns (as long as there is no overlap).


Patterns that can match an empty string are accepted, but empty string
matches are never recognized. An example is the pattern "(super)?(man)?", in
which all components are optional. This pattern finds all occurrences of both
"super" and "man"; the output differs from matching with "super|man" when only
the matching substrings are being shown.


If the LC_ALL or LC_CTYPE environment variable is set,
pcre2grep uses the value to set a locale when calling the PCRE2 library.
The --locale option can be used to override this.

 <a name="SEC3" href="#TOC1">SUPPORT FOR COMPRESSED FILES</a> 

It is possible to compile pcre2grep so that it uses libz or
libbz2 to read compressed files whose names end in .gz or
.bz2, respectively. You can find out whether your pcre2grep binary
has support for one or both of these file types by running it with the
--help option. If the appropriate support is not present, all files are
treated as plain text. The standard input is always so treated. When input is
from a compressed .gz or .bz2 file, the --line-buffered option is
ignored.

 <a name="SEC4" href="#TOC1">BINARY FILES</a> 

By default, a file that contains a binary zero byte within the first 1024 bytes
is identified as a binary file, and is processed specially. (GNU grep
identifies binary files in this manner.) However, if the newline type is
specified as "nul", that is, the line terminator is a binary zero, the test for
a binary file is not applied. See the --binary-files option for a means
of changing the way binary files are handled.

 <a name="SEC5" href="#TOC1">BINARY ZEROS IN PATTERNS</a> 

Patterns passed from the command line are strings that are terminated by a
binary zero, so cannot contain internal zeros. However, patterns that are read
from a file via the -f option may contain binary zeros.

 <a name="SEC6" href="#TOC1">OPTIONS</a> 

The order in which some of the options appear can affect the output. For
example, both the -H and -l options affect the printing of file
names. Whichever comes later in the command line will be the one that takes
effect. Similarly, except where noted below, if an option is given twice, the
later setting is used. Numerical values for options may be followed by K or M,
to signify multiplication by 1024 or 1024*1024 respectively.


--
This terminates the list of options. It is useful if the next item on the
command line starts with a hyphen but is not an option. This allows for the
processing of patterns and file names that start with hyphens.


-A number, --after-context=number
Output up to number lines of context after each matching line. Fewer
lines are output if the next match or the end of the file is reached, or if the
processing buffer size has been set too small. If file names and/or line
numbers are being output, a hyphen separator is used instead of a colon for the
context lines. A line containing "--" is output between each group of lines,
unless they are in fact contiguous in the input file. The value of number
is expected to be relatively small. When -c is used, -A is ignored.


-a, --text
Treat binary files as text. This is equivalent to
--binary-files=text.


-B number, --before-context=number
Output up to number lines of context before each matching line. Fewer
lines are output if the previous match or the start of the file is within
number lines, or if the processing buffer size has been set too small. If
file names and/or line numbers are being output, a hyphen separator is used
instead of a colon for the context lines. A line containing "--" is output
between each group of lines, unless they are in fact contiguous in the input
file. The value of number is expected to be relatively small. When
-c is used, -B is ignored.


--binary-files=word
Specify how binary files are to be processed. If the word is "binary" (the
default), pattern matching is performed on binary files, but the only output is
"Binary file &#60;name&#62; matches" when a match succeeds. If the word is "text",
which is equivalent to the -a or --text option, binary files are
processed in the same way as any other file. In this case, when a match
succeeds, the output may be binary garbage, which can have nasty effects if
sent to a terminal. If the word is "without-match", which is equivalent to the
-I option, binary files are not processed at all; they are assumed not to
be of interest and are skipped without causing any output or affecting the
return code.


--buffer-size=number
Set the parameter that controls how much memory is obtained at the start of
processing for buffering files that are being scanned. See also
--max-buffer-size below.


-C number, --context=number
Output number lines of context both before and after each matching line.
This is equivalent to setting both -A and -B to the same value.


-c, --count
Do not output lines from the files that are being scanned; instead output the
number of lines that would have been shown, either because they matched, or, if
-v is set, because they failed to match. By default, this count is
exactly the same as the number of lines that would have been output, but if the
-M (multiline) option is used (without -v), there may be more
suppressed lines than the count (that is, the number of matches).
 
 
If no lines are selected, the number zero is output. If several files are are
being scanned, a count is output for each of them and the -t option can
be used to cause a total to be output at the end. However, if the
--files-with-matches option is also used, only those files whose counts
are greater than zero are listed. When -c is used, the -A,
-B, and -C options are ignored.


--colour, --color
If this option is given without any data, it is equivalent to "--colour=auto".
If data is required, it must be given in the same shell item, separated by an
equals sign.


--colour=value, --color=value
This option specifies under what circumstances the parts of a line that matched
a pattern should be coloured in the output. By default, the output is not
coloured. The value (which is optional, see above) may be "never", "always", or
"auto". In the latter case, colouring happens only if the standard output is
connected to a terminal. More resources are used when colouring is enabled,
because pcre2grep has to search for all possible matches in a line, not
just one, in order to colour them all.
 
 
The colour that is used can be specified by setting one of the environment
variables PCRE2GREP_COLOUR, PCRE2GREP_COLOR, PCREGREP_COLOUR, or
PCREGREP_COLOR, which are checked in that order. If none of these are set,
pcre2grep looks for GREP_COLORS or GREP_COLOR (in that order). The value
of the variable should be a string of two numbers, separated by a semicolon,
except in the case of GREP_COLORS, which must start with "ms=" or "mt="
followed by two semicolon-separated colours, terminated by the end of the
string or by a colon. If GREP_COLORS does not start with "ms=" or "mt=" it is
ignored, and GREP_COLOR is checked.
 
 
If the string obtained from one of the above variables contains any characters
other than semicolon or digits, the setting is ignored and the default colour
is used. The string is copied directly into the control string for setting
colour on a terminal, so it is your responsibility to ensure that the values
make sense. If no relevant environment variable is set, the default is "1;31",
which gives red.


-D action, --devices=action
If an input path is not a regular file or a directory, "action" specifies how
it is to be processed. Valid values are "read" (the default) or "skip"
(silently skip the path).


-d action, --directories=action
If an input path is a directory, "action" specifies how it is to be processed.
Valid values are "read" (the default in non-Windows environments, for
compatibility with GNU grep), "recurse" (equivalent to the -r option), or
"skip" (silently skip the path, the default in Windows environments). In the
"read" case, directories are read as if they were ordinary files. In some
operating systems the effect of reading a directory like this is an immediate
end-of-file; in others it may provoke an error.


--depth-limit=number
See --match-limit below.


-e pattern, --regex=pattern, --regexp=pattern
Specify a pattern to be matched. This option can be used multiple times in
order to specify several patterns. It can also be used as a way of specifying a
single pattern that starts with a hyphen. When -e is used, no argument
pattern is taken from the command line; all arguments are treated as file
names. There is no limit to the number of patterns. They are applied to each
line in the order in which they are defined until one matches.
 
 
If -f is used with -e, the command line patterns are matched first,
followed by the patterns from the file(s), independent of the order in which
these options are specified. Note that multiple use of -e is not the same
as a single pattern with alternatives. For example, X|Y finds the first
character in a line that is X or Y, whereas if the two patterns are given
separately, with X first, pcre2grep finds X if it is present, even if it
follows Y in the line. It finds Y only if there is no X in the line. This
matters only if you are using -o or --colo(u)r to show the part(s)
of the line that matched.


--exclude=pattern
Files (but not directories) whose names match the pattern are skipped without
being processed. This applies to all files, whether listed on the command line,
obtained from --file-list, or by scanning a directory. The pattern is a
PCRE2 regular expression, and is matched against the final component of the
file name, not the entire path. The -F, -w, and -x options do
not apply to this pattern. The option may be given any number of times in order
to specify multiple patterns. If a file name matches both an --include
and an --exclude pattern, it is excluded. There is no short form for this
option.


--exclude-from=filename
Treat each non-empty line of the file as the data for an --exclude
option. What constitutes a newline when reading the file is the operating
system's default. The --newline option has no effect on this option. This
option may be given more than once in order to specify a number of files to
read.


--exclude-dir=pattern
Directories whose names match the pattern are skipped without being processed,
whatever the setting of the --recursive option. This applies to all
directories, whether listed on the command line, obtained from
--file-list, or by scanning a parent directory. The pattern is a PCRE2
regular expression, and is matched against the final component of the directory
name, not the entire path. The -F, -w, and -x options do not
apply to this pattern. The option may be given any number of times in order to
specify more than one pattern. If a directory matches both --include-dir
and --exclude-dir, it is excluded. There is no short form for this
option.


-F, --fixed-strings
Interpret each data-matching pattern as a list of fixed strings, separated by
newlines, instead of as a regular expression. What constitutes a newline for
this purpose is controlled by the --newline option. The -w (match
as a word) and -x (match whole line) options can be used with -F.
They apply to each of the fixed strings. A line is selected if any of the fixed
strings are found in it (subject to -w or -x, if present). This
option applies only to the patterns that are matched against the contents of
files; it does not apply to patterns specified by any of the --include or
--exclude options.


-f filename, --file=filename
Read patterns from the file, one per line, and match them against each line of
input. As is the case with patterns on the command line, no delimiters should
be used. What constitutes a newline when reading the file is the operating
system's default interpretation of \n. The --newline option has no
effect on this option. Trailing white space is removed from each line, and
blank lines are ignored. An empty file contains no patterns and therefore
matches nothing. Patterns read from a file in this way may contain binary
zeros, which are treated as ordinary data characters. See also the comments
about multiple patterns versus a single pattern with alternatives in the
description of -e above.
 
 
If this option is given more than once, all the specified files are read. A
data line is output if any of the patterns match it. A file name can be given
as "-" to refer to the standard input. When -f is used, patterns
specified on the command line using -e may also be present; they are
tested before the file's patterns. However, no other pattern is taken from the
command line; all arguments are treated as the names of paths to be searched.


--file-list=filename
Read a list of files and/or directories that are to be scanned from the given
file, one per line. What constitutes a newline when reading the file is the
operating system's default. Trailing white space is removed from each line, and
blank lines are ignored. These paths are processed before any that are listed
on the command line. The file name can be given as "-" to refer to the standard
input. If --file and --file-list are both specified as "-",
patterns are read first. This is useful only when the standard input is a
terminal, from which further lines (the list of files) can be read after an
end-of-file indication. If this option is given more than once, all the
specified files are read.


--file-offsets
Instead of showing lines or parts of lines that match, show each match as an
offset from the start of the file and a length, separated by a comma. In this
mode, no context is shown. That is, the -A, -B, and -C
options are ignored. If there is more than one match in a line, each of them is
shown separately. This option is mutually exclusive with --output,
--line-offsets, and --only-matching.


-H, --with-filename
Force the inclusion of the file name at the start of output lines when
searching a single file. By default, the file name is not shown in this case.
For matching lines, the file name is followed by a colon; for context lines, a
hyphen separator is used. If a line number is also being output, it follows the
file name. When the -M option causes a pattern to match more than one
line, only the first is preceded by the file name. This option overrides any
previous -h, -l, or -L options.


-h, --no-filename
Suppress the output file names when searching multiple files. By default,
file names are shown when multiple files are searched. For matching lines, the
file name is followed by a colon; for context lines, a hyphen separator is used.
If a line number is also being output, it follows the file name. This option
overrides any previous -H, -L, or -l options.


--heap-limit=number
See --match-limit below.


--help
Output a help message, giving brief details of the command options and file
type support, and then exit. Anything else on the command line is
ignored.


-I
Ignore binary files. This is equivalent to
--binary-files=without-match.


-i, --ignore-case
Ignore upper/lower case distinctions during comparisons.


--include=pattern
If any --include patterns are specified, the only files that are
processed are those that match one of the patterns (and do not match an
--exclude pattern). This option does not affect directories, but it
applies to all files, whether listed on the command line, obtained from
--file-list, or by scanning a directory. The pattern is a PCRE2 regular
expression, and is matched against the final component of the file name, not
the entire path. The -F, -w, and -x options do not apply to
this pattern. The option may be given any number of times. If a file name
matches both an --include and an --exclude pattern, it is excluded.
There is no short form for this option.


--include-from=filename
Treat each non-empty line of the file as the data for an --include
option. What constitutes a newline for this purpose is the operating system's
default. The --newline option has no effect on this option. This option
may be given any number of times; all the files are read.


--include-dir=pattern
If any --include-dir patterns are specified, the only directories that
are processed are those that match one of the patterns (and do not match an
--exclude-dir pattern). This applies to all directories, whether listed
on the command line, obtained from --file-list, or by scanning a parent
directory. The pattern is a PCRE2 regular expression, and is matched against
the final component of the directory name, not the entire path. The -F,
-w, and -x options do not apply to this pattern. The option may be
given any number of times. If a directory matches both --include-dir and
--exclude-dir, it is excluded. There is no short form for this option.


-L, --files-without-match
Instead of outputting lines from the files, just output the names of the files
that do not contain any lines that would have been output. Each file name is
output once, on a separate line. This option overrides any previous -H,
-h, or -l options.


-l, --files-with-matches
Instead of outputting lines from the files, just output the names of the files
containing lines that would have been output. Each file name is output once, on
a separate line. Searching normally stops as soon as a matching line is found
in a file. However, if the -c (count) option is also used, matching
continues in order to obtain the correct count, and those files that have at
least one match are listed along with their counts. Using this option with
-c is a way of suppressing the listing of files with no matches. This
opeion overrides any previous -H, -h, or -L options.


--label=name
This option supplies a name to be used for the standard input when file names
are being output. If not supplied, "(standard input)" is used. There is no
short form for this option.


--line-buffered
When this option is given, non-compressed input is read and processed line by
line, and the output is flushed after each write. By default, input is read in
large chunks, unless pcre2grep can determine that it is reading from a
terminal (which is currently possible only in Unix-like environments or
Windows). Output to terminal is normally automatically flushed by the operating
system. This option can be useful when the input or output is attached to a
pipe and you do not want pcre2grep to buffer up large amounts of data.
However, its use will affect performance, and the -M (multiline) option
ceases to work. When input is from a compressed .gz or .bz2 file,
--line-buffered is ignored.


--line-offsets
Instead of showing lines or parts of lines that match, show each match as a
line number, the offset from the start of the line, and a length. The line
number is terminated by a colon (as usual; see the -n option), and the
offset and length are separated by a comma. In this mode, no context is shown.
That is, the -A, -B, and -C options are ignored. If there is
more than one match in a line, each of them is shown separately. This option is
mutually exclusive with --output, --file-offsets, and
--only-matching.


--locale=locale-name
This option specifies a locale to be used for pattern matching. It overrides
the value in the LC_ALL or LC_CTYPE environment variables. If no
locale is specified, the PCRE2 library's default (usually the "C" locale) is
used. There is no short form for this option.


--match-limit=number
Processing some regular expression patterns may take a very long time to search
for all possible matching strings. Others may require a very large amount of
memory. There are three options that set resource limits for matching.
 
 
The --match-limit option provides a means of limiting computing resource
usage when processing patterns that are not going to match, but which have a
very large number of possibilities in their search trees. The classic example
is a pattern that uses nested unlimited repeats. Internally, PCRE2 has a
counter that is incremented each time around its main processing loop. If the
value set by --match-limit is reached, an error occurs.
 
 
The --heap-limit option specifies, as a number of kibibytes (units of
1024 bytes), the amount of heap memory that may be used for matching. Heap
memory is needed only if matching the pattern requires a significant number of
nested backtracking points to be remembered. This parameter can be set to zero
to forbid the use of heap memory altogether.
 
 
The --depth-limit option limits the depth of nested backtracking points,
which indirectly limits the amount of memory that is used. The amount of memory
needed for each backtracking point depends on the number of capturing
parentheses in the pattern, so the amount of memory that is used before this
limit acts varies from pattern to pattern. This limit is of use only if it is
set smaller than --match-limit.
 
 
There are no short forms for these options. The default limits can be set
when the PCRE2 library is compiled; if they are not specified, the defaults
are very large and so effectively unlimited.


\fB--max-buffer-size=number
This limits the expansion of the processing buffer, whose initial size can be
set by --buffer-size. The maximum buffer size is silently forced to be no
smaller than the starting buffer size.


-M, --multiline
Allow patterns to match more than one line. When this option is set, the PCRE2
library is called in "multiline" mode. This allows a matched string to extend
past the end of a line and continue on one or more subsequent lines. Patterns
used with -M may usefully contain literal newline characters and internal
occurrences of ^ and $ characters. The output for a successful match may
consist of more than one line. The first line is the line in which the match
started, and the last line is the line in which the match ended. If the matched
string ends with a newline sequence, the output ends at the end of that line.
If -v is set, none of the lines in a multi-line match are output. Once a
match has been handled, scanning restarts at the beginning of the line after
the one in which the match ended.
 
 
The newline sequence that separates multiple lines must be matched as part of
the pattern. For example, to find the phrase "regular expression" in a file
where "regular" might be at the end of a line and "expression" at the start of
the next line, you could use this command:
<pre>
 pcre2grep -M 'regular\s+expression' &#60;file&#62;
</pre>
The \s escape sequence matches any white space character, including newlines,
and is followed by + so as to match trailing white space on the first line as
well as possibly handling a two-character newline sequence.
 
 
There is a limit to the number of lines that can be matched, imposed by the way
that pcre2grep buffers the input file as it scans it. With a sufficiently
large processing buffer, this should not be a problem, but the -M option
does not work when input is read line by line (see \fP--line-buffered\fP.)


-N newline-type, --newline=newline-type
The PCRE2 library supports five different conventions for indicating
the ends of lines. They are the single-character sequences CR (carriage return)
and LF (linefeed), the two-character sequence CRLF, an "anycrlf" convention,
which recognizes any of the preceding three types, and an "any" convention, in
which any Unicode line ending sequence is assumed to end a line. The Unicode
sequences are the three just mentioned, plus VT (vertical tab, U+000B), FF
(form feed, U+000C), NEL (next line, U+0085), LS (line separator, U+2028), and
PS (paragraph separator, U+2029).
 
 
When the PCRE2 library is built, a default line-ending sequence is specified.
This is normally the standard sequence for the operating system. Unless
otherwise specified by this option, pcre2grep uses the library's default.
The possible values for this option are CR, LF, CRLF, ANYCRLF, or ANY. This
makes it possible to use pcre2grep to scan files that have come from
other environments without having to modify their line endings. If the data
that is being scanned does not agree with the convention set by this option,
pcre2grep may behave in strange ways. Note that this option does not
apply to files specified by the -f, --exclude-from, or
--include-from options, which are expected to use the operating system's
standard newline sequence.


-n, --line-number
Precede each output line by its line number in the file, followed by a colon
for matching lines or a hyphen for context lines. If the file name is also
being output, it precedes the line number. When the -M option causes a
pattern to match more than one line, only the first is preceded by its line
number. This option is forced if --line-offsets is used.


--no-jit
If the PCRE2 library is built with support for just-in-time compiling (which
speeds up matching), pcre2grep automatically makes use of this, unless it
was explicitly disabled at build time. This option can be used to disable the
use of JIT at run time. It is provided for testing and working round problems.
It should never be needed in normal use.


-O text, --output=text
When there is a match, instead of outputting the whole line that matched,
output just the given text. This option is mutually exclusive with
--only-matching, --file-offsets, and --line-offsets. Escape
sequences starting with a dollar character may be used to insert the contents
of the matched part of the line and/or captured substrings into the text.
 
 
$&#60;digits&#62; or ${&#60;digits&#62;} is replaced by the captured
substring of the given decimal number; zero substitutes the whole match. If
the number is greater than the number of capturing substrings, or if the
capture is unset, the replacement is empty.
 
 
$a is replaced by bell; $b by backspace; $e by escape; $f by form feed; $n by
newline; $r by carriage return; $t by tab; $v by vertical tab.
 
 
$o&#60;digits&#62; is replaced by the character represented by the given octal
number; up to three digits are processed.
 
 
$x&#60;digits&#62; is replaced by the character represented by the given hexadecimal
number; up to two digits are processed.
 
 
Any other character is substituted by itself. In particular, $$ is replaced by
a single dollar.


-o, --only-matching
Show only the part of the line that matched a pattern instead of the whole
line. In this mode, no context is shown. That is, the -A, -B, and
-C options are ignored. If there is more than one match in a line, each
of them is shown separately, on a separate line of output. If -o is
combined with -v (invert the sense of the match to find non-matching
lines), no output is generated, but the return code is set appropriately. If
the matched portion of the line is empty, nothing is output unless the file
name or line number are being printed, in which case they are shown on an
otherwise empty line. This option is mutually exclusive with --output,
--file-offsets and --line-offsets.


-onumber, --only-matching=number
Show only the part of the line that matched the capturing parentheses of the
given number. Up to 32 capturing parentheses are supported, and -o0 is
equivalent to -o without a number. Because these options can be given
without an argument (see above), if an argument is present, it must be given in
the same shell item, for example, -o3 or --only-matching=2. The comments given
for the non-argument case above also apply to this option. If the specified
capturing parentheses do not exist in the pattern, or were not set in the
match, nothing is output unless the file name or line number are being output.
 
 
If this option is given multiple times, multiple substrings are output for each
match, in the order the options are given, and all on one line. For example,
-o3 -o1 -o3 causes the substrings matched by capturing parentheses 3 and 1 and
then 3 again to be output. By default, there is no separator (but see the next
option).


--om-separator=text
Specify a separating string for multiple occurrences of -o. The default
is an empty string. Separating strings are never coloured.


-q, --quiet
Work quietly, that is, display nothing except error messages. The exit
status indicates whether or not any matches were found.


-r, --recursive
If any given path is a directory, recursively scan the files it contains,
taking note of any --include and --exclude settings. By default, a
directory is read as a normal file; in some operating systems this gives an
immediate end-of-file. This option is a shorthand for setting the -d
option to "recurse".


--recursion-limit=number
See --match-limit above.


-s, --no-messages
Suppress error messages about non-existent or unreadable files. Such files are
quietly skipped. However, the return code is still 2, even if matches were
found in other files.


-t, --total-count
This option is useful when scanning more than one file. If used on its own,
-t suppresses all output except for a grand total number of matching
lines (or non-matching lines if -v is used) in all the files. If -t
is used with -c, a grand total is output except when the previous output
is just one line. In other words, it is not output when just one file's count
is listed. If file names are being output, the grand total is preceded by
"TOTAL:". Otherwise, it appears as just another number. The -t option is
ignored when used with -L (list files without matches), because the grand
total would always be zero.


-u, --utf-8
Operate in UTF-8 mode. This option is available only if PCRE2 has been compiled
with UTF-8 support. All patterns (including those for any --exclude and
--include options) and all subject lines that are scanned must be valid
strings of UTF-8 characters.


-V, --version
Write the version numbers of pcre2grep and the PCRE2 library to the
standard output and then exit. Anything else on the command line is
ignored.


-v, --invert-match
Invert the sense of the match, so that lines which do not match any of
the patterns are the ones that are found.


-w, --word-regex, --word-regexp
Force the patterns only to match "words". That is, there must be a word
boundary at the start and end of each matched string. This is equivalent to
having "\b(?:" at the start of each pattern, and ")\b" at the end. This
option applies only to the patterns that are matched against the contents of
files; it does not apply to patterns specified by any of the --include or
--exclude options.


-x, --line-regex, --line-regexp
Force the patterns to start matching only at the beginnings of lines, and in
addition, require them to match entire lines. In multiline mode the match may
be more than one line. This is equivalent to having "^(?:" at the start of each
pattern and ")$" at the end. This option applies only to the patterns that are
matched against the contents of files; it does not apply to patterns specified
by any of the --include or --exclude options.

 <a name="SEC7" href="#TOC1">ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES</a> 

The environment variables LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE are examined, in that
order, for a locale. The first one that is set is used. This can be overridden
by the --locale option. If no locale is set, the PCRE2 library's default
(usually the "C" locale) is used.

 <a name="SEC8" href="#TOC1">NEWLINES</a> 

The -N (--newline) option allows pcre2grep to scan files with
different newline conventions from the default. Any parts of the input files
that are written to the standard output are copied identically, with whatever
newline sequences they have in the input. However, the setting of this option
affects only the way scanned files are processed. It does not affect the
interpretation of files specified by the -f, --file-list,
--exclude-from, or --include-from options, nor does it affect the
way in which pcre2grep writes informational messages to the standard
error and output streams. For these it uses the string "\n" to indicate
newlines, relying on the C I/O library to convert this to an appropriate
sequence.

 <a name="SEC9" href="#TOC1">OPTIONS COMPATIBILITY</a> 

Many of the short and long forms of pcre2grep's options are the same
as in the GNU grep program. Any long option of the form
--xxx-regexp (GNU terminology) is also available as --xxx-regex
(PCRE2 terminology). However, the --depth-limit, --file-list,
--file-offsets, --heap-limit, --include-dir,
--line-offsets, --locale, --match-limit, -M,
--multiline, -N, --newline, --om-separator,
--output, -u, and --utf-8 options are specific to
pcre2grep, as is the use of the --only-matching option with a
capturing parentheses number.


Although most of the common options work the same way, a few are different in
pcre2grep. For example, the --include option's argument is a glob
for GNU grep, but a regular expression for pcre2grep. If both the
-c and -l options are given, GNU grep lists only file names,
without counts, but pcre2grep gives the counts as well.

 <a name="SEC10" href="#TOC1">OPTIONS WITH DATA</a> 

There are four different ways in which an option with data can be specified.
If a short form option is used, the data may follow immediately, or (with one
exception) in the next command line item. For example:
<pre>
 -f/some/file
 -f /some/file
</pre>
The exception is the -o option, which may appear with or without data.
Because of this, if data is present, it must follow immediately in the same
item, for example -o3.


If a long form option is used, the data may appear in the same command line
item, separated by an equals character, or (with two exceptions) it may appear
in the next command line item. For example:
<pre>
 --file=/some/file
 --file /some/file
</pre>
Note, however, that if you want to supply a file name beginning with ~ as data
in a shell command, and have the shell expand ~ to a home directory, you must
separate the file name from the option, because the shell does not treat ~
specially unless it is at the start of an item.


The exceptions to the above are the --colour (or --color) and
--only-matching options, for which the data is optional. If one of these
options does have data, it must be given in the first form, using an equals
character. Otherwise pcre2grep will assume that it has no data.

 <a name="SEC11" href="#TOC1">USING PCRE2'S CALLOUT FACILITY</a> 

pcre2grep has, by default, support for calling external programs or
scripts or echoing specific strings during matching by making use of PCRE2's
callout facility. However, this support can be disabled when pcre2grep is
built. You can find out whether your binary has support for callouts by running
it with the --help option. If the support is not enabled, all callouts in
patterns are ignored by pcre2grep.


A callout in a PCRE2 pattern is of the form (?C&#60;arg&#62;) where the argument is
either a number or a quoted string (see the
<a href="pcre2callout.html">pcre2callout</a>
documentation for details). Numbered callouts are ignored by pcre2grep;
only callouts with string arguments are useful.

 
Calling external programs or scripts
 

If the callout string does not start with a pipe (vertical bar) character, it
is parsed into a list of substrings separated by pipe characters. The first
substring must be an executable name, with the following substrings specifying
arguments:
<pre>
 executable_name|arg1|arg2|...
</pre>
Any substring (including the executable name) may contain escape sequences
started by a dollar character: $&#60;digits&#62; or ${&#60;digits&#62;} is replaced by the
captured substring of the given decimal number, which must be greater than
zero. If the number is greater than the number of capturing substrings, or if
the capture is unset, the replacement is empty.


Any other character is substituted by itself. In particular, $$ is replaced by
a single dollar and $| is replaced by a pipe character. Here is an example:
<pre>
 echo -e "abcde\n12345" | pcre2grep \
 '(?x)(.)(..(.))
 (?C"/bin/echo|Arg1: [$1] [$2] [$3]|Arg2: $|${1}$| ($4)")()' -

Output:

Arg1: [a] [bcd] [d] Arg2: |a| ()
 abcde
 Arg1: [1] [234] [4] Arg2: |1| ()
 12345
</pre>
The parameters for the execv() system call that is used to run the
program or script are zero-terminated strings. This means that binary zero
characters in the callout argument will cause premature termination of their
substrings, and therefore should not be present. Any syntax errors in the
string (for example, a dollar not followed by another character) cause the
callout to be ignored. If running the program fails for any reason (including
the non-existence of the executable), a local matching failure occurs and the
matcher backtracks in the normal way.

 
Echoing a specific string
 

If the callout string starts with a pipe (vertical bar) character, the rest of
the string is written to the output, having been passed through the same escape
processing as text from the --output option. This provides a simple echoing
facility that avoids calling an external program or script. No terminator is
added to the string, so if you want a newline, you must include it explicitly.
Matching continues normally after the string is output. If you want to see only
the callout output but not any output from an actual match, you should end the
relevant pattern with (*FAIL).

 <a name="SEC12" href="#TOC1">MATCHING ERRORS</a> 

It is possible to supply a regular expression that takes a very long time to
fail to match certain lines. Such patterns normally involve nested indefinite
repeats, for example: (a+)*\d when matched against a line of a's with no final
digit. The PCRE2 matching function has a resource limit that causes it to abort
in these circumstances. If this happens, pcre2grep outputs an error
message and the line that caused the problem to the standard error stream. If
there are more than 20 such errors, pcre2grep gives up.


The --match-limit option of pcre2grep can be used to set the
overall resource limit. There are also other limits that affect the amount of
memory used during matching; see the discussion of --heap-limit and
--depth-limit above.

 <a name="SEC13" href="#TOC1">DIAGNOSTICS</a> 

Exit status is 0 if any matches were found, 1 if no matches were found, and 2
for syntax errors, overlong lines, non-existent or inaccessible files (even if
matches were found in other files) or too many matching errors. Using the
-s option to suppress error messages about inaccessible files does not
affect the return code.


When run under VMS, the return code is placed in the symbol PCRE2GREP_RC
because VMS does not distinguish between exit(0) and exit(1).

 <a name="SEC14" href="#TOC1">SEE ALSO</a> 

pcre2pattern(3), pcre2syntax(3), pcre2callout(3).

 <a name="SEC15" href="#TOC1">AUTHOR</a> 

Philip Hazel
 
University Computing Service
 
Cambridge, England.
 

 <a name="SEC16" href="#TOC1">REVISION</a> 

Last updated: 24 February 2018
 
Copyright &copy; 1997-2018 University of Cambridge.
 

Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE2 index page</a>.

MR SKB