Brian's is a better answer On 08/24/2014 05:48 PM, Brian Cluff wrote: > It tells grep to use the Extended regular expressions. Further down in > the man page for grep it defines the various regular expressions as: > > "grep understands three different versions of regular expression syntax: > “basic” (BRE), “extended” (ERE) and “perl” (PRCE). In GNU grep, there is > no difference in available functionality between > basic and extended syntaxes. In other implementations, basic regular > expressions are less powerful. The following description applies to > extended regular expressions; differences for basic > regular expressions are summarized afterwards. Perl regular expressions > give additional functionality, and are documented in pcresyntax(3) and > pcrepattern(3), but only work if pcre is available > in the system." > > So the current versions of grep treat the basic and extended regular > expressions as the same, so if they aren't powerful enough you will want > to use the -P flag to get the PERL regular expressions. > > Here's a good web page that will show you the differences between basic > and extended regular expressions: > http://www.regular-expressions.info/posix.html > > Brian Cluff > > On 08/24/2014 02:21 PM, Michael Havens wrote: >> what does the -E option do. The man page leaves much to be desired.... >> :-)~MIKE~(-: >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > > --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss