Grep exact word UNIX

Question

I have a file and I want to grep one specific word from that file. I am using MobaXterm. For example, I want to grep the word test-common and inside my file I have

 1. Version: 1.0.0    test-common Author Created Path   
 2. Version: 1.0.0    test-common-config   Author   Created Path    
 3. Version: 1.0.0    unit-test-common   Author   Created Path   
 4. Version: 1.0.0    unit-test-common-config   Author   Created Path  

I tried:

• grep test-common file
• grep "\\\\< test-common \\\\>" file (don't return anything)
• grep -w test-common file
• grep -w "test-common " file
• grep -r "\\btest-common\\b" file (don't return anything)
• grep -sw test-common file (don't work)
• grep -o test-common file (don't work)
• grep \\\\< bil-common \\\\> file

Also ^bil-common and bil-common$ is not working either.

For the commands I had a result, the result was:

test-common
test-common-config

Which is not what I want. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

You can do:

grep -E '(^|\s+)test-common(?=\s|$)' file

This matches "test-common" that are followed only by a space or at the end of the line, and are preceded by one or more space, or at the beginning of the line.

Answer 2

1)I think that the easy way is to just do:
Add to string space before and after (in case you know that it is in the middle of a string)

       grep " string " file

2) if all of the answers doesn't work i would check that grep is not aliased by you:

   witch grep

or add

\\ sign before the grep making sure you use unix grep

      \grep " string " file