Grokking grep

A colleague was tinkering with grep and, thanks to him, I discovered a bit more about the trusty little utility.

I had not really explored the -e switch: -

     -e pattern, --regexp=pattern

             Specify a pattern used during the search of the input: an input line is selected if it matches any of the specified patterns.  This option is

             most useful when multiple -e options are used to specify multiple patterns, or when a pattern begins with a dash (‘-’).

but he pointed out that that switch can have problems when parsing, say, a list of strings that are similar but different.

As an example, I have a set of files: -

-rw-r--r--   1 hayd  wheel    0 22 Jul 17:34 dave

-rw-r--r--   1 hayd  wheel    0 22 Jul 17:34 dave_1

-rw-r--r--   1 hayd  wheel    0 22 Jul 17:36 dave_2

-rw-r--r--   1 hayd  wheel    0 22 Jul 17:36 dave_3

If I want to e.g. query a directory for all files containing the word 'dave' I could do this: -

ls -al | grep dave

or, to be more specific: -

ls -al | grep -e Dave

both of which return: -

-rw-r--r--   1 hayd  wheel    0 22 Jul 17:34 dave

-rw-r--r--   1 hayd  wheel    0 22 Jul 17:34 dave_1

-rw-r--r--   1 hayd  wheel    0 22 Jul 17:36 dave_2

-rw-r--r--   1 hayd  wheel    0 22 Jul 17:36 dave_3

However, if I only want to return the file that's named 'dave' and ignore the rest, I'm somewhat stymied.

However, grep -w comes to the rescue: -

     -w, --word-regexp

             The expression is searched for as a word (as if surrounded by ‘[[:<:]]’ and ‘[[:>:]]’; see re_format(7)).  This option has no effect if -x is

             also specified.

so I can run: -

ls -al | grep -w dave

and just get this: -

-rw-r--r--   1 hayd  wheel    0 22 Jul 17:34 Dave

Isn't that nifty ?