I need to find lines in the text file where the second column starts with the number 117. How do I do that in bash? I tried

grep -E 117 test.txt

but that just prints everything with 117.

CodePudding user response：

grep is not the right tool for this. Use one of these 2 awk solutions:

# regex approach
awk '$2 ~ /^117/' test.txt

# non-regex approach
awk 'index($2, "117") == 1' test.txt

CodePudding user response：

If you want to use grep, make sure that you match the second column:

grep -E '^\w \s 117' test.txt

• -E use extended regular expressions
• ^ start of the line anchor
• \w one or more characters
• \s one or more whitespaces
• 117 match when the second column starts with the number 117