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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-03T20:58:06+00:00

Assuming sentence The time is now 8:15pm. Followed by some other text Why would

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Assuming sentence

“The time is now 8:15pm. Followed by some other text”

Why would the following regex not match the line?

egrep '\<[1-9]\s*:\s*[0-9]{2}\s*[Pp][Mm]\>' file

I am on MAC, using GNU egrep

$ egrep –version egrep (GNU grep) 2.5.1

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Totally unable to reproduce.

    Mac OS X 10.7:

    (0)marks-mac-mini> cat file
The time is now 8:15pm. Followed by some other text
"The time is now 8:15pm. Followed by some other text"
(0)marks-mac-mini> egrep '\<[1-9]\s*:\s*[0-9]{2}\s*[Pp][Mm]\>' file
The time is now 8:15pm. Followed by some other text
"The time is now 8:15pm. Followed by some other text"
(0)marks-mac-mini> egrep --version
egrep (GNU grep) 2.5.1

    So you’re wrong about something somewhere…

    EDIT Ah, the problem is the space. egrep doesn’t recognize \s; that’s a Perlism. Your question didn’t include the space there.

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