grep tricks

grep is a very useful tool to search for lines of text that contain (or don’t contain) certain patterns. A few simple tricks make it even more useful.

1. Sometimes it can be hard to spot the pattern you were looking for in grep output. Using the --color=auto option will show the matches in red so that they catch your eye immediately. You can add the following alias definition in your .bashrc: alias grep='grep --color=auto'
2. Although you can use grep to search through source code, you probably shouldn’t, since there is a better alternative: ack.