$ matches the end of line. You don't get any output because that file doesn't have any lines ending in 'bmike1'. That's why it was recommended that you grep for a shell.
You are getting the same output with and without the ^ because it happens to be that bmike1 always appears at the beginning of the line in that file. Create a new file with these two lines:
My name is bmike1
bmike1 is my name
Then do grep ^bmike1, grep bmike1 and just grep bmike1 (no -E necessary).
Okay, I tried to grep my passwd file with and without the '^' and it seems both are the same. What's the difference between the commands and why should I bother to type the '^'? As to the '$' if all it does is produces a blank linr what is it's use?bmike1@c521 ~ $ grep -E '^bmike1:' /etc/passwdbmike1:x:1000:1000:Michael Havens,,,:/home/bmike1:/bin/bashbmike1@c521 ~ $ grep -E 'bmike1:' /etc/passwdbmike1:x:1000:1000:Michael Havens,,,:/home/bmike1:/bin/bashbmike1@c521 ~ $ grep -E 'bmike1$:' /etc/passwdbmike1@c521 ~ $ grep -E 'bmike1$' /etc/passwdbmike1@c521 ~ $:-)~MIKE~(-:On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 11:39 PM, der.hans <PLUGd@lufthans.com> wrote:Am 06. Mär, 2015 schwätzte Michael Havens so:
moin moin Mike,
when using regular expressions '$' matches the end of the line and '^'
matcheѕ the beginning of the line. So, '^$' matches a blank line.
grep -E '^fred:' /etc/passwd # shows the entry for fred's account
grep -E ':/bin/bash$' /etc/passwd # shows all of the accounts that have
bash as their shell
ciao,
der.hans--
I'm going through the BASH manual at The Linux Documentation Project and
was going over special characters. They say that 'a "$" addresses the end
of a line bash'. Huh; what does that mean? You see on my blog that I had
another special character I was wondering about but my web search revealed
to me what was hidden. My web search in this case turns up a lot of stuff
too. None of it relevant though. Could you wonderful people of Plug remove
the scales from my eyes?
:-)~MIKE~(-:
# http://www.LuftHans.com/ http://www.PhxLinux.org/
# "Metrosexuals notwithstanding, quiche still lacks something." -- David Brin
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