Question

My file has this structure:

    HELLO h e l lo
    HELLO(2) h ee l lo
    HELLOMUM h e l ll m um
    HELLO-FATHER h e llo fa th er
    HOME h o m e
    HONEY h o ne y
    HONEY(2) ho nei y
    HONEY(3) h o ney
    HONEYMOON ho ney m o o n
    HONEY-MOON h o ne y moo n

I would like, while looking for the word HELLO, for example, to extract only the lines relatives to the words HELLO and HELLO(2). Same thing if I am looking for the word HONEY, I would like to have only the lines relative to HONEY, HONEY(2) and HONEY(3).
I am using

grep -w "HELLO" file.txt

but this gives me back for HELLO, for example, also the lines relative to HELLOMUM and HELLO-FATHER.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

I guess this should work for you.

grep '^HELLO[^a-zA-Z]' your_file

tested below:

> grep '^HELLO[^a-zA-Z\-]' temp
HELLO h e l lo
HELLO(2) h ee l lo
> grep '^HONEY[^a-zA-Z\-]' temp
HONEY h o ne y
HONEY(2) ho nei y
HONEY(3) h o ney
>