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Accepted
arash deilami
Asked: 2018-08-24 06:12:55 +0800 CST

How do I use grep to search for lines containing all words in a list with no specific order in a text file? [duplicate]

  • 772

How can we use grep to get line(s) containing a group of words, while the order of words is not important, although line(s) should contain all words mentioned in search?

I have done that with phasing the search (with piping, saving the outputs in temporary files, and searching again), but I'd like to know if I can do that in one attempt.

Here is a sample; I want to search in the lines below for lines containing sample, words, list:

it's a sample test file for a list of words.
list of words without a specific order, it's a sample.
line with no search keyword here.
list the sample files.
something completely different.

And get this result:

it's a sample test file for a list of words.
list of words without a specific order, it's a sample.
command-line grep

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The easy way is with multiple calls to grep: 

    grep sample testfile.txt | grep words | grep list

    A demonstration: 

    echo -e "it's a sample test file for a list of words.\nlist of words without a specific order, it's a sample. \nline with no search keyword here. \nlist the sample words. \nsomething completely different." | grep sample | grep words | grep list
it's a sample test file for a list of words.
list of words without a specific order, it's a sample. 
list the sample words.
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  2. You can use lookaheads with Perl-regex (-P):

    grep -P '(?=.*list)(?=.*words)(?=.*sample)'

    Example:

    echo "it's a sample test file for a list of words.
list of words without a specific order, it's a sample.
line with no search keyword here.
list the sample words.
sample line with only two of the keywords inside.
something completely different." \
| grep -P '(?=.*list)(?=.*words)(?=.*sample)'

it's a sample test file for a list of words.
list of words without a specific order, it's a sample.
list the sample words.

    (via)

    With agrep (sudo apt install agrep) you can chain multiple patterns:

    agrep "sample;words;list"

    (via)

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