3
I'm trying to figure out how to deal with whitespace in grep. How do I tell grep to find strings containing whitespace or tabs? The manual tells me nothing. \s seems to work for whitespace, and \S seems to work for non-whitespace, but it includes all whitespace characters (spaces AND tabs) and it doesn't work if I put it in brackets, treating the backslash and the \s as separate characters.
MYV
Posted 2013-05-29T01:38:06.947
Reputation: 1 003
5
Are you sure about that?
$ printf "a \tb\na b\na\tb" | grep '.\s*.'
a b
a b
a b
$ grep -V
grep (GNU grep) 2.14
Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
I.e., as shown, \s has matched both spaces and tabs -- I included the 'a' and 'b' just to highlight it.
What do you get?
xpt
Posted 2013-05-29T01:38:06.947
Reputation: 5 548
-1, if I could: .\s*. also matches .., i.e., any two characters - and since all your strings have two characters, grep will match all of them. Should have used .\s+.. – muru – 2015-05-27T20:10:09.117
@muru, Please read the question carefully before you doing -1. You've completely missed the point. This is not a question regarding \s* or \s+. The OP thinks that \s is not working, I'm just emphasizing that it is working fine. Secondly, test your result before you post anything. Have you try to run printf "a \tb\na b\na\tb" | grep '.\s+.' before you post? Do you know why it is not working? -- you should use -E but failed to mentioned that. Next time, please think twice before showing off how kick-ass you are. – xpt – 2015-05-28T00:48:06.480
I regret what I said after cooling off. It's been a long and tiring day. Sorry. – xpt – 2015-05-28T01:16:15.483
OK, having cooled down, did you spot your mistake? (I can't do a -1, by the way) – muru – 2015-05-28T03:27:39.303
I've double-checked everything before I post and I've made my points clear. End of discussion. – xpt – 2015-05-28T15:52:59.520
try echo ab | grep '.\s*.' before you end it. – muru – 2015-05-28T15:56:40.300
2
In my experience grep works best with POSIX character classes - look up [[:space:]] for instance. I use grep extensively in some programs for user input validation and have never had a problem if I stuck to POSIX classes.
However, as commenters have noted, your question is not entirely clear.
ShankarG
Posted 2013-05-29T01:38:06.947
Reputation: 696
1You'll need to get more clear with your question. Maybe put in an example of data and what you'd expect to match. – nik – 2013-05-29T02:51:36.973
Yes, it isn't entirely clear what you mean. What would you like to do precisely? And what does it mean to say that you put "in brackets, treating the backslash and the s as separate characters"? – ShankarG – 2013-05-29T05:18:06.330
3"whitespace or tabs"? Tabs are whitespace. – user1686 – 2013-05-29T08:32:07.253