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LOOK(1) General Commands Manual LOOK(1) NAME look -- display lines beginning with a given string SYNOPSIS look [-df] [-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. If file is not specified, the file /usr/share/dict/words is used, only alphanumeric characters are compared and the case of alphabetic charac- ters is ignored. The following options are available: -d, --alphanum Dictionary character set and order, i.e., only alphanumeric characters are compared. -f, --ignore-case Ignore the case of alphabetic characters. -t, --terminate termchar Specify a string termination character, i.e., only the charac- ters in string up to and including the first occurrence of termchar are compared. ENVIRONMENT The LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execu- tion of the look utility. Their effect is described in environ(7). FILES /usr/share/dict/words the dictionary EXIT STATUS 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. EXAMPLES Look for lines starting with `xylen' in the file /usr/share/dict/words: $ look xylen xylene xylenol xylenyl Same as above, but do not consider any characters in string beyond the first `e'. Note that -f is implicit since we are searching the default file /usr/share/dict/words: $ look -t e xylen Xyleborus xylem xylene xylenol xylenyl xyletic COMPATIBILITY The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters partici- pated in comparisons when the -d option was specified. This was incor- rect and the current man page matches the historic implementation. The -a and --alternative flags are ignored for compatibility. SEE ALSO grep(1), sort(1) HISTORY A look utility appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. BUGS Lines are not compared according to the current locale's collating or- der. Input files must be sorted with LC_COLLATE set to `C'. FreeBSD 13.2 December 29, 2020 LOOK(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | EXIT STATUS | EXAMPLES | COMPATIBILITY | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | BUGS
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