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GREP in Text Processing
GREP (Global Regular Expression Print) is considered a significant tool in text processing area on Unix-like operating systems including Linux. It is a powerful utility that searches and filters text matching a given pattern. When it identifies a line that matches the pattern, it prints the line to the screen, offering an effective and a codified way to find text within files.
An essential part of many shell scripts, bash commands, and command-line operations, GREP is a versatile tool that comes pre-installed with every Linux distribution. It embodies three main parts - format, action and regex. Over the years, it had been effectively utilized in multiple programming languages and data science applications.
Here is an example of a simple GREP command:
grep "pattern" fileName
This command will search for the specified pattern within the file and prints the line to the terminal.
There is also an alternative to grep - ripgrep.
ripgrep is an extremely fast text processor that supports all the features of grep and extends it.
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