look(1) BSD General Commands Manual look(1)
NAME
look -- display lines beginning with a given string
SYNOPSIS
look [-df] [-t termchar] string [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
The look utility displays any lines in file which contain string as a
prefix. As look performs a binary search, the lines in file must be
sorted.
If file is not specified, the file /usr/share/dict/words is used, only
alphanumeric characters are compared and the case of alphabetic charac-
ters is ignored.
The following options are available:
-d Dictionary character set and order, i.e., only alphanumeric char-
acters are compared.
-f Ignore the case of alphabetic characters.
-t Specify a string termination character, i.e., only the characters
in string up to and including the first occurrence of termchar
are compared.
ENVIRONMENT
The LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution
of the look utility. Their effect is described in environ(7).
FILES
/usr/share/dict/words the dictionary
EXIT STATUS
The look utility exits 0 if one or more lines were found and displayed, 1
if no lines were found, and >1 if an error occurred.
COMPATIBILITY
The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters partici-
pated in comparisons when the -d option was specified. This was incor-
rect and the current man page matches the historic implementation.
SEE ALSO
grep(1), sort(1)
HISTORY
A look utility appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
Lines are not compared according to the current locale's collating order.
Input files must be sorted with LC_COLLATE set to `C'.
BSD July 17, 2004 BSD
Mac OS X 10.6 - Generated Thu Sep 17 20:08:02 CDT 2009