File: grep.info,  Node: Invoking,  Next: Regular Expressions,  Prev: Introduction,  Up: Top

2 Invoking ‘grep’
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The general synopsis of the ‘grep’ command line is

     grep [OPTION...] [PATTERNS] [FILE...]

There can be zero or more OPTION arguments, and zero or more FILE
arguments.  The PATTERNS argument contains one or more patterns
separated by newlines, and is omitted when patterns are given via the
‘-e PATTERNS’ or ‘-f FILE’ options.  Typically PATTERNS should be quoted
when ‘grep’ is used in a shell command.

* Menu:

* Command-line Options::        Short and long names, grouped by category.
* Environment Variables::       POSIX, GNU generic, and GNU grep specific.
* Exit Status::                 Exit status returned by ‘grep’.
* grep Programs::               ‘grep’ programs.