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newuser
Asked: 2014-03-10 21:52:42 +0800 CST

Using grep to search texts with single quote?

  • 772

I am using gedit text editor with embedded terminal in ubuntu 12.04. I'm trying to search for some text using grep. I want to search for this line of code 

'type' => 'select'

I tried:

grep -r '\'type\' => \'select\''

But grep didn't return any results.

So can someone kindly tell me how to search for the code above?

command-line

3 Answers

  1. Surround your search string with double quotes:

    grep "'type' => 'select'"
    • 20

  2. You cannot escape single quotes that appear within single quotes. As explained in the bash manual:

    Enclosing characters in single quotes (‘'’) preserves the literal value of each character within the quotes. A single quote may not occur between single quotes, even when preceded by a backslash.

    So, you have to use different approaches:

    1. Use double quotes:

       grep  "'type' => 'select'" file

    2. If you prefer needlessly complex solutions:

       grep  "'"type"'"\ =\>\ "'"select"'" file

    3. You can always search for any single character instead of specifying the single quotes:

       grep  '.type. => .select.' file

    But just use ", it makes things much more straightforward.

    • 12

  3. cd to the directory that contains your .txt file 

    cd /path

    Then :

    you can use grep "'type' => 'select'" name.txt

    or :

    `grep "'type' => 'select'" /path/file.txt

    Output :

    enter image description here

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