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(grep.info)Introduction

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Introduction
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   `grep' searches the input files for lines containing a match to a
given pattern list.  When it finds a match in a line, it copies the
line to standard output (by default), or does whatever other sort of
output you have requested with options.

   Though `grep' expects to do the matching on text, it has no limits
on input line length other than available memory, and it can match
arbitrary characters within a line.  If the final byte of an input file
is not a newline, `grep' silently supplies one, unless the input is an empty
file.  Since newline is also a separator for the list of patterns, there is no 
way to match newline characters in a text.