Question

I have a file in the format, where each line has double numbers seperated by spaces, e.g.:

1 -0.5 0.567 0.123 

What is the correct way to find files not in this format? I’ve tried:

[^0123456789\.\-\s]

But it did not work, any help?

Answer 1

The following works for me:

> grep '[^0123456789\. \-]' *

But note that this method will not notify you of formatting errors. For example:

1 -1.0.4 .012

is not the same format as what you specified but will not be matched.

EDIT: It looks like you can use the [:space:] character class as well.

> grep '[^0123456789\.[:space:]\-]' *

EDIT: And following that same logic, you can use the [:digit:] character class.

> grep '[^[:digit:]\.[:space:]\-]' *