Grep a particular string from column eliminating characters at the end.

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

So basically I have this file containing query output in seperated columns.

In particular column I have the below strings:
news
news-prio

I am trying to grep the string news without listing news-prio aswell.

I tried

grep "$MSG_TYPE"

,

grep -w "$MSG_TYPE"

,

grep "\<$MSG_TYPE\>"

, however none of them worked.

The variable MSG_TYPE is taken as an argument in the script.

Can someone provide an example on how I can achieve this?

2

What column the string is in?
What separates columns?
A sample file would help as well...

3

A pipe seperates the column

q_1_2|Orange|news|0|0|0|0|43200|43200

The below is an example:

msg_type=`cat $CRONOUTFILE| grep $AFFILIATE | grep "$MSG_TYPE" | awk -F'|' '{print$3}' `
4 
MSG='news'
awk -F'|' '$3 == msg' msg="${MSG}" "${CRONOUTFILE}"
5

How about

grep "|$MSG_TYPE|" file
q_1_2|Orange|news|0|0|0|0|43200|43200

Please be aware that he pipe symbol has a special meaning in extended regexes.