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shellunixsolaris-10

gegrep command working inconsistently

I am trying to grep certain pattern from a file and list it but grep command is not working consistently.
For one of the pattern its working and for other its not working. Please let me know if I am missing anything:

The file to grep

===============================================================================================================================
START_TIME               END_TIME                 CLIENT_NAME                   STATUS         BACKUP_TYPEPOLICY_NAME
===============================================================================================================================
2015-12-09 01:51:35      2015-12-09 02:11:47      atrcxb1144-bup3               success        FULL      atrcxb1144-bup3_FILES
2015-12-09 02:13:06      2015-12-09 02:14:12      atrcxb1144-bup3               success        FULL      atrcxb1144-bup3_Hot_Catalog
2015-12-15 08:17:48      2015-12-15 08:18:55      atrcxb1144-bup3               success        FULL      atrcxb1144-bup3_Hot_Catalog
2016-01-23 23:55:00      2016-01-24 00:17:03      cbtcnbgrn2eniqs2-bkup         success        FULL      ENIQ_STATS_ROOT_cbtcnbgrn2eniqs2-bkup

Unsuccessful

bash-3.2# /usr/sfw/bin/gegrep '([[:blank:]]+success[[:blank:]]+[FI][UN][LC][LR][[:blank:]]+ENIQ_STATS_ROOT_cbtcnbgrn2eniqs2-bkup[[:blank:]]+)' /usr/openv/netbackup/db/.backup_history
bash-3.2# echo $?
1

Successful

bash-3.2# /usr/sfw/bin/gegrep '([[:blank:]]+success[[:blank:]]+[FI][UN][LC][LR][[:blank:]]+ENIQ_STATS_ONBLADE_RAW_cbtcnbgrn2eniqs2-bkup[[:blank:]]+)' /usr/openv/netbackup/db/.backup_history
2016-01-23 23:55:00      2016-01-24 00:17:03      cbtcnbgrn2eniqs2-bkup         success        FULL      ENIQ_STATS_ONBLADE_RAW_cbtcnbgrn2eniqs2-bkup                   
bash-3.2# echo $?
0
Solution

  • It seems like in the unsuccessful case, ENIQ_STATS_ROOT_cbtcnbgrn2eniqs2-bkup is not followed by a space/blank, while in the successful one, ENIQ_STATS_ONBLADE_RAW_cbtcnbgrn2eniqs2-bkup is.

    And your regex matches a required blank at at the end of those two columns.

    So grep is working as expected, and to match the string in your unsuccessful case, you need to replace the last [[blank]]+ with [[blank]]* as follows:

    bash-3.2# /usr/sfw/bin/gegrep '([[:blank:]]+success[[:blank:]]+[FI][UN][LC][LR][[:blank:]]+ENIQ_STATS_ROOT_cbtcnbgrn2eniqs2-bkup[[:blank:]]*)' /usr/openv/netbackup/db/.backup_history

    The + matches one or more occurrences of the previous pattern, while * zero or more occurrences.