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#32704
Can grep search for a line feed and a null character at the same time?
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Message #17 received at 32704 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):
On 9/15/18 11:43 AM, 21naown <at> gmail.com wrote:
> Thank you for your messages.
>
> It is possible I did not understand correctly your messages, because
> grep finds hex sequences with the “-Pa” options at least.
grep -P introduces a completely different regex engine, with its own
quirks. As such, it does introduce different rules on backslash
sequences accepted.
>
> Examples—“input.txt” contains, from the file system, for example
> “\xFF\xFE\x0D\x00\x0A\x00\x74\x00\x65\x00\x73\x00\x74\x00\x0D\x00\x0A\x00\x74\x00\x65\x00\x73\x00\x74\x00\x5F\x00\x74\x00\x77\x00\x6F\x00\x0D\x00\x0A\x00”:
>
> grep -Pa '\x00' input.txt
> → found
> grep -Pza '\x0A' input.txt
> → found
> grep -Pa '\x0A\x00' input.txt
This will never match - when you are not using -z, there are no \x0A in
the input stream (they have all been consumed by grep parsing one line
at a time, ending at \x0A). Instead, you'll want to search for '^\x00'
or '\x00$' for a pattern anchored to a line transition, to find patterns
where newline was next to NUL.
> grep -Pza '\x0A\x00' input.txt
> → not found for the both
Similarly, when you are using -z, there are no \x00 in the input stream
(they have all been consumed by grep parsing one NUL-terminated record
at a time, ending at \x00). Instead, you'll want to search for '^\x0a'
or '\x0a$' for a pattern anchored to a record transition, to find
patterns where newline was next to NUL.
>
> But is it at least possible to find “\x0A\x00” with grep?
If you bend the rules by throwing -P into the mix, yes :)
--
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization: qemu.org | libvirt.org
This bug report was last modified 4 years and 328 days ago.
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