Your search strings are not in quotes, and are therefore interpreted by the shell directly instead of by `grep`.. For this particular set of cases, either single or double quotes will work. For differences in the single and double quotes which can make a difference in other cases, see the man page for the shell you are using (most likely `bash). For the man page for `bash, enter the following command at your system prompt: man bash Note that as I said before, the `bash` man page is somewhat lengthy, but there is a lot of good stuff in there. Here is an example of one command which solves one of your problems--I leave the other problem for you to figure out as an exercise: grep -c "\." ./testfile.txt HTH, and keep on learnin' :) . On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 10:22:11AM -0700, Ned wrote: > Hi all, > > I wrote a bash script and all but the two commands below were marked wrong, so I need to correct them. Hope you don't mind pointing out my mistakes: > 1. needs to output how many lines are there with a . (period) in them. I used the escape char \ before the period, but it apparently didn't work. > > echo Output the number of lines that have a \"\.\" \(period\): > grep -c \. ./test.file > > 2. this one needs to output the number of lines containing the string '/*': > > echo Output the number of lines that have the string \"'/'\*\": > grep -c /\* ./test.file > > > Thanks a lot in advance! > Ned > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Ralph. N6BNO. Wisdom comes from central processing, not from I/O. rreid at sunset.net http://personalweb.sunset.net/~rreid ...passing through The City of Internet at the speed of light! CIRCLE AREA = _pi * r ^ 2
