Globally search for the Regular Expression and Print (Generalized Regular Expression Pattern-Matcher)

(gr-eh-p)

While often given the acronym expansion Generalized Regular Expression Pattern-Matcher, grep is actually named after the qed/ed editor subcommand "g/re/p" where re stands for a regular expression. This command is given to Globally search for the Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it. Grep is a UNIX command-line utility with extensive capabilities to search files. Fairly complicated expressions can be used as arguments to grep and the output can be fed to other utilities for further processing. There are versions available for other operating systems.

More Information

• GREP GNU Project Page
• Windows Grep
• BBEdit Grep Tutorial