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In debugging, I use a lot of 'print' and commenting out it with '#print'. How can I use grep to find the line without '#' before 'print'? 

# print <- not detect
#print <- not detect
abc # print <-- not detect
print <- detect
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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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grep '^[^#]*print'

Would be print only preceded by non-# characters.

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Classic solution:

grep -v '^#' <input |grep 'print'
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  • The issue is that # can be anywhere in the line. I updated my post. Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 15:36
  • The solution greps for any line without the #, then checks for the word 'print'. Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 15:38
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    @prosseek Changing the requirements in a question after you receive an answer is not the right way. Better is to ask a new question. Never mind, luckily the solution works also for the changed requirements. But please do not change again the requirements. Ask instead a new question. Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 16:05
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The easiest approach is probably going to be to use two greps, piped together.

$ grep 'print' <input | grep -v '#[[:space:]]*print'

With the file input containing your examples, that gives:

print <- detect

That works for all of your examples. Which is probably good enough, but as manatwork and I point out in comments, its going to be very difficult to defeat all the edge cases with grep.

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  • For this kind of job, weeding out 80% of the "should not detect" is probably good enough. Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 16:27
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I'm still learning but wouldn't the ff work as well? 

grep -v '#[ ]*print' input_file
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