Help with grepping data from a text file

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello,
I have a text file which contains a list of strings which I want to grep from another file where these strings occur and print out only these lines.
I had earlier used the grep command

where File1 was the file containing the strings to be grepped (Source File) and File2 the Target File from which the strings had to extracted.
And this had worked, but this time the above syntax does not work.
I am in a windows environment and tried both GREP for DOS as well as GREP32 but in each case I do not get the desired results.
Any help would be appreciated since the amount of strings to be grepped is quite large.

2

You say that you're looking for strings, but with the options you've given you're not looking for fixed strings; you're looking for matches to basic regular expressions contained in File1. If you want fixed strings, you need to add the -F option as in grep -F -f File1 File2 . If this doesn't solve your problem, we need to know what the contents of File1 and File2 look like, and any messages you're getting when you run the command. If you're running in a Windows environment, where are you getting your grep and grep32 utilities?

3

Many thanks. Am out at the moment but will test the syntax you have provided as soon as I get back. In case of a glitch I will put a small sample of both files as attachments.

---------- Post updated 09-05-12 at 12:06 AM ---------- Previous update was 09-04-12 at 09:57 PM ----------

Hello,
I check out the suggestion you gave me and typed the command as under

dupes is the file containg the words to be grepped and pers2.lng is the target file
I got the following output

The -F option is treated as unknown. I tried also with standard GREP under windows and got the same answer.
I am giving below a small sample
LIST of words to grep from file called DUPES

Small file containing the words to be grepped the original filename is Pers2.lng

Many thanks for your kind help

4

With the example you're showing for the contents of DUPES (or dupes) with no "special" characters included, using grep, grep -F, fgrep, grep -E, or egrep shouldn't matter.

What is the exact command line you are using? When you do an ls in that directory, what are the names of the files (exact names with uppercase and lowercase letters as displayed by ls)? Are you using the same filenames shown by ls when you run the command?

What output do you get on stdout when you run that command?

What output do you get on stderr when you run that command?

What is the exit status of the command that you run?

If the above doesn't make sense to you, run the following commands and show us the output:

grep -f dupes pers2.lng > grep.stdout 2> grep.stderr
echo exit code is $?
ls -l dupes pers2.lng
echo grep.stdout contains:
cat grep.stdout
echo grep.stderr contains:
cat grep.stderr
5

Hello,
Sorry for the delay in answering. My broadband was down the whole day because of heavy rains.
I found out the stupid thing I was doing. The command works fine. But if I want to locate an exact match from the source file, I should have added a regex or looked for word preceded and followed by an equal to sign. I tried the former and it worked.
Many thanks for your concern and your suggestions