When you’re searching for a text in a particular file under a Linux system you’re usually using the grep command. grep stands for Get Regular Expression and Print, in this article we’ll show several examples of how to use the SSH grep command in your everyday server management and monitoring:
Using SSH grep command for a basic search
grep "textToSearchFor" file.txt
grep for a case-insensitive search
grep -i "THIS CASING DOESN'T MATTER" file.conf
grep without matching
grep -v "thisWillNotBeMatched" file.txt
grep for word matching
Usually, grep searches like how you would match a Regular Expression (as it’s in its name), if you would like to apply \b search you would use
grep -w "justThisWordWillBeMatched" file.cnf
grep for to count the number of occurrences
grep -c "howManyTimesThisAppearsInTheFile" file.php
SSH grep command with line numbers
This will show the number of the line the match is found
grep -n "whichLineIsThisOn" file.txt
