regex for searching a word in a word

Question

i have a csv file which i need to filter mails marked with the word 'spam' lines look like this

email;text;somestatus;mailserver status response; response message
[e-mail];mx.mail.com;2;connection reset; try later
[e-mail];somemx.record.com;3;spam message response; connection reset
[e-mail];spammxrecord.com;5;Deferred: lsjdflsdj; try later
[e-mail];mx-too.de., dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection reset by mx-too.de.;4;Deferred: Connection reset by mx-too.de.

lines 3 and 5 should match

the pattern should match if in the first csv part (the chars until the first ';') contains the word 'spam' it shouldnt match if the word is within the other columns of the csv

i tried with

grep -e "spam[^;]*;\([^;]*;\)\{3\}"

anyone knows the solution? thx

Answer 1

Try grep -e "^[^;]*spam[^;]*;"