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Using OR Operator

Sample file,

Code Block

language	bash

cat fruits.txt
yellow bananas
green apples
red oranges
red apples

Using OR operator in grep search. Note you need a somewhat current version of grep (~~you are out of luck with Solaris~~ use egrep for Solaris),

Code Block

language	bash

grep 'apples\|oranges' fruits.txt
green apples
red oranges
red apples

Grep for items that do not match,

Code Block
grep -v 'read' fruits.txt yellow bananas green apples

Have grep tell you if it found a match in the file,

Code Block

language	bash

grep "diddle" -q fruits.txt && echo "FOUND" || echo "NOPE"
NOPE
grep "apples" -q fruits.txt && echo "FOUND" || echo "NOPE"
FOUND

Warning

Look up if time permits how to do this using quotes to handle spaces or special characters....

Hmm, maybe all I need to do is escape any special characters and spaces probably work as is.