grep -P no longer works how can I rewrite my searc

Question

It looks like the new version of OSX no longer supports grep -P and as such has made some of my scripts stop working.

var1=`grep -o -P '(?<=<st:italic>).*(?=</italic>)' file.txt`

I need to capture the grep to a variable and I need to use the zero width assertions. as well as \K

var2=`grep -P -o '(property:)\K.*\d+(?=end)' file.txt`

Any alternatives would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

use the perl one-liner regex by passing the find output with a pipe. I used lookbehind (get src links in html) and lookahead for " and passed the output of curl (html) to it.

bash-3.2# curl stackoverflow.com | perl -0777 -ne '$a=1;while(m/(?<=src\=\")(.*)(?=\")/g){print "Match #".$a." "."$&\n";$a+=1;}'
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  239k  100  239k    0     0  1911k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 1919k
Match #1 //ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.12.4/jquery.min.js
Match #2 //cdn.sstatic.net/Js/stub.en.js?v=fb6157e02696
Match #3 https://ssum-sec.casalemedia.com/usermatch?s=183712&amp;cb=https%3A%2F%2Fengine.adzerk.net%2Fudb%2F22%2Fsync%2Fi.gif%3FpartnerId%3D1%26userId%3D
Match #4 //i.stack.imgur.com/817gJ.png" height="16" width="18" alt="" class="sponsor-tag-img">elasticsearch</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/elasticsearch-2.0" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;elasticsearch-2.0&#39;" rel="tag">elasticsearch-2.0</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/elasticsearch-dsl" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;elasticsearch-dsl&#39;" rel="tag
Match #5 //i.stack.imgur.com/817gJ.png" height="16" width="18" alt="" class="sponsor-tag-img">elasticsearch</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/sharding" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;sharding&#39;" rel="tag">sharding</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/master" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;master&#39;" rel="tag
Match #6 //i.stack.imgur.com/tKsDb.png" height="16" width="18" alt="" class="sponsor-tag-img">android</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/linux" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;linux&#39;" rel="tag">linux</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/camera" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;camera&#39;" rel="tag
Match #7 //i.stack.imgur.com/tKsDb.png" height="16" width="18" alt="" class="sponsor-tag-img">android</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/firebase" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;firebase&#39;" rel="tag"><img src="//i.stack.imgur.com/5d55j.png" height="16" width="18" alt="" class="sponsor-tag-img">firebase</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/firebase-authentication" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;firebase-authentication&#39;" rel="tag
Match #8 //i.stack.imgur.com/tKsDb.png" height="16" width="18" alt="" class="sponsor-tag-img">android</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/ios" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;ios&#39;" rel="tag">ios</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/in-app-purchase" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;in-app-purchase&#39;" rel="tag">in-app-purchase</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/piracy-protection" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;piracy-protection&#39;" rel="tag
Match #9 //i.stack.imgur.com/tKsDb.png" height="16" width="18" alt="" class="sponsor-tag-img">android</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/unity3d" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;unity3d&#39;" rel="tag">unity3d</a> <a href="/questions/tagged/vr" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;vr&#39;" rel="tag
Match #10 http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-c1rF4kxgLUzNc.gif" alt="" class="dno
bash-3.2# date
Mon Oct 24 20:57:11 EDT 2016

Answer 2

Equivalent of the accepted answer, but without the requirement of the -P switch, which was not present on both machines I had available.

find . -type f -exec perl -nle 'print $& if m{\r\n}' {} ';' -exec perl -pi -e 's/\r\n/\n/g' {} '+'

Answer 3

If you want to do the minimal amount of work, change

grep -P 'PATTERN' file.txt

to

perl -nle'print if m{PATTERN}' file.txt

and change

grep -o -P 'PATTERN' file.txt

to

perl -nle'print $& while m{PATTERN}g' file.txt

So you get:

var1=`perl -nle'print $& while m{(?<=<st:italic>).*(?=</italic>)}g' file.txt`
var2=`perl -nle'print $& while m{(property:)\K.*\d+(?=end)}g' file.txt`

---

In your specific case, you can achieve simpler code with extra work.

var1=`perl -nle'print for m{<st:italic>(.*)</italic>}g' file.txt`
var2=`perl -nle'print for /property:(.*\d+)end/g' file.txt`

Answer 4

use perl;

perl -ne 'print if /regex/' files ...

If you need more grep options (I see you would like -o at least) there are various pgrep implementations floating around the net, many of them in Perl.

If "almost Perl" is good enough, PCRE ships with pcregrep.

Answer 5

This one worked for me:

    awk  -F":" '/PATTERN/' file.txt