Type. Command. grep is a command-line utility for searching plain-text data sets for lines that match a regular expression. Its name comes from the ed command g/re/p (globally search for a regular expression and print matching lines), which has the same effect.

What does grep stand for in Linux?

grep Global regular expression print. The grep command comes from the command used by the ed program (a simple and venerable Unix text editor) to print all lines matching a certain pattern: g/re/p.

What is grep option?

GREP stands for Globally Search a Regular Expression and Print. The basic usage of the command is grep [options] expression filename . GREP will by default display any lines in a file that contain the expression. GREP command can be used to find or search a regular expression or a string in a text file.