Re: Line Numbers in ASCII File

[Sandy Harris <sandy -at- storm -dot- ca>]

Steve Goldberg wrote:
> 
> We have a huge ASCII text file against which we would like to do
> searches to find matching strings in the text. Once we match a
> particular text string we would like to be able to determine on what
> line number or page number that string is located.
> Does anyone know of a way to do this? In Word, of course, it's simple,
> but that formatting is lost when the file is saved as plain text.

On Unix, or with Unix tools installed on a Win box:

http://www.redhat.com/software/tools/cygwin/
http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/

that's just grep -n. This has been a standard tool since at least the
late 70s.

It also gives the ability to match more complex patterns. For example.

grep -n '1\-8[08][08]\-[0-9]+'

is my (first guess, without looking at the manual, and untested, so quite
likely wrong) attempt to get all lines with North American toll-free phone
numbers. It matches any string with these pieces, in order:
	"1-8"
	"0" or "8"
	"0" or "8"
	"-"
	at least one digit
With some practice and a bit of mucking about, you can do quite a
lot with this "regular expression" search facility.

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