NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXAMPLE | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AVAILABILITY | COLOPHON |
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LOOK(1) User Commands LOOK(1)
look - display lines beginning with a given string
look [options] string [file]
The look utility displays any lines in file which contain string. As look performs a binary search, the lines in file must be sorted (where sort(1) was given the same options -d and/or -f that look is invoked with). If file is not specified, the file /usr/share/dict/words is used, only alphanumeric characters are compared and the case of alphabetic characters is ignored.
-a, --alternative Use the alternative dictionary file. -d, --alphanum Use normal dictionary character set and order, i.e. only blanks and alphanumeric characters are compared. This is on by default if no file is specified. Note that blanks have been added to dictionary character set for compatibility with sort -d command since version 2.28. -f, --ignore-case Ignore the case of alphabetic characters. This is on by default if no file is specified. -t, --terminate character Specify a string termination character, i.e. only the characters in string up to and including the first occurrence of character are compared. -V, --version Display version information and exit. -h, --help Display help text and exit. The look utility exits 0 if one or more lines were found and displayed, 1 if no lines were found, and >1 if an error occurred.
sort -d /etc/passwd -o /tmp/look.dict look -t: root:foobar /tmp/look.dict
WORDLIST Path to a dictionary file. The environment variable has greater priority than the dictionary path defined in FILES segment.
/usr/share/dict/words the dictionary /usr/share/dict/web2 the alternative dictionary
grep(1), sort(1)
The look utility appeared in Version 7 AT&T Unix.
The look command is part of the util-linux package and is available from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
This page is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
utilities) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
bug report for this manual page, send it to
util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
2018-02-02. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
was found in the repository was 2018-02-01.) If you discover any
rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe
there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
util-linux June 2011 LOOK(1)