help on egrep

Hi there,

              How many multiple values can be in egrep for seraching? i am giving more values but i am getting the error like Unknown error. My input in extended to 2nd line. my command is like below.

egrep -i -h "$D1|$D2|$D3|$D4|$D5|$D6|$D7|$D8|$D9|$D10|$D11|$D12|$D13|$D14|$D15|$D16|$D17|$D18|$D19|$D20|$D21|$D22|$D23|$D24|$D25|$D26|$D27|$D28|$
D29|$D30|$D31|$D32|$D33|$D34|$D35|$D36|$D37|$D38|$D39|$D40|$D41|$D42|$D43|$D44|$D45|$D46|$D47|$D48" $file > $FILE4 2>> $FILE5

can sombody help.

thx

I really don't know, but if you have to search for a high number of patterns it is better to use a pattern file instead of passing all the values on the command line!

Simply put all your patterns $D1 ... $D48 in a text file, one per line, and issue:

egrep -hi -f pattern_file.txt $file > $FILE4 2>> $FILE5

Have a look at the man page for more details.

thanks robot,

That helped a lot.