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LOOK (1) | General commands | Unix Manual Pages | :man▋

NAME

look - display lines beginning with a given string

CONTENTS

Synopsis
Description
Environment
Files
Exit Status
Compatibility
See Also
History
Bugs

SYNOPSIS

look [-df] [-t termchar] string []

DESCRIPTION

The look utility displays any lines in file which contain string as a prefix. As look performs a binary search, the lines in file must be sorted.

If file is not specified, the file /usr/share/dict/words is used, only alphanumeric characters are compared and the case of alphabetic characters is ignored.

The following options are available:

-d Dictionary character set and order, i.e., only alphanumeric characters are compared.
-f Ignore the case of alphabetic characters.
-t Specify a string termination character, i.e., only the characters in string up to and including the first occurrence of termchar are compared.

ENVIRONMENT

The LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of the look utility. Their effect is described in environ(7).

FILES

/usr/share/dict/words
the dictionary

EXIT STATUS

The look utility exits 0 if one or more lines were found and displayed, 1 if no lines were found, and >1 if an error occurred.

COMPATIBILITY

The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters participated in comparisons when the -d option was specified. This was incorrect and the current man page matches the historic implementation.

SEE ALSO

grep(1), sort(1)

HISTORY

BUGS

 
Created by Blin Media, 2008-2013