$ 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).

On Mar 7, 2015 8:34 AM, "Michael Havens" <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:

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/passwd

bmike1:x:1000:1000:Michael Havens,,,:/home/bmike1:/bin/bash

bmike1@c521 ~ $ grep -E 'bmike1:' /etc/passwd

bmike1:x:1000:1000:Michael Havens,,,:/home/bmike1:/bin/bash

bmike1@c521 ~ $ grep -E 'bmike1$:' /etc/passwd

bmike1@c521 ~ $ grep -E 'bmike1$' /etc/passwd

bmike1@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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