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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXAMPLE | FILES | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AVAILABILITY | COLOPHON |
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
/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
2017-07-05. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
sion 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 man‐
ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
util-linux June 2011 LOOK(1)