LOOK

Section: User Commands (1)
Index Return to Main Contents

BSD mandoc
 

NAME

look - display lines beginning with a given string  

SYNOPSIS

look [-dfa ] [-t termchar ] string [file ]  

DESCRIPTION

The look utility displays any lines in file which contain string as a prefix. As look performs a binary search, the lines in file must be sorted (where sort(1) got 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.

Options:

-d
Dictionary character set and order, i.e. only alphanumeric characters are compared. (On by default if no file specified).
-f
Ignore the case of alphabetic characters. (On by default if no file specified).
-a
Use the alternate dictionary /usr/share/dict/web2
-t
Specify a string termination character, i.e. only the characters in string up to and including the first occurrence of termchar are compared.

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.  

FILES

/usr/share/dict/words
the dictionary
/usr/share/dict/web2
the alternate dictionary

 

SEE ALSO

grep(1), sort(1)  

COMPATIBILITY

The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters participated in comparisons when the -d option was specified. This was incorrect and the current man page matches the historic implementation.  

HISTORY

Look appeared in Version 7 AT&T Unix.  

AVAILABILITY

The look command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
FILES
SEE ALSO
COMPATIBILITY
HISTORY
AVAILABILITY

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 05:29:05 GMT, December 24, 2015