In SCO Unix, I have a working script to give me a list of COBOL (files end in .cbl) programs containing a specific variable ($1) on a line which is not a comment. The output of the first grep will be the full path to a file, a colon, and the contents of the line where this variable is found.
The usual way to comment a line is to place an asterisk() in column 7 so a grep which excludes a colon, six characters which could be anything, and an asterisk works. I am trying to take out a type of comment starting with spaces or tabs followed by ">" but thus far, no progress.
Let me bring attention to the highlighted parts.' ":[ ]*\*>" A colon `:' followed by either one or more space or space, followed by a literal `*' followed by a `>'. That's not what you described and I highlighted.
Omitting sample input and output will probably decrease the likelihood of responders even looking at your problem.
Best wishes ... cheers, drl
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I got it to fly by putting a space followed by a tab inside the "[]". Some dummy test files had various combinations of space(s) and tab(s) in front of "*>", and these did not show up.