Tools
grep Cheat Sheet
Print-ready cheat sheet for grep, organized for fast lookup, study, and desk-side use
Sample
What's in this cheat sheet
- Basic Usage
- Regex Patterns
- Extended Regex
- Context Lines
- Recursive Search
- Counting & Listing
- Inverse Match
- Multiple Patterns
- Performance
- Common Patterns
Running grep
grep "pattern" file.txt # search in file
grep "error" *.log # search multiple files
grep "hello" file1.txt file2.txt # explicit file list
cat file.txt | grep "pattern" # pipe input
dmesg | grep -i "usb" # filter command output
Common Flags
-i | Case-insensitive matching |
-v | Invert match — print non-matching lines |
-c | Print count of matching lines |
-n | Show line numbers |
-l | List filenames with matches only |
-L | List filenames without matches |
-w | Match whole words only |
-x | Match whole lines only |
Download the full cheat sheet for all sections, formatted for print
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