How to grep lines with exact match

Question

I have file with ips and port number in the below format

ip:port Written
ip:port Not Written

example: 127.0.0.1:80 Written

I want to grep lines which have Written only, when i tried grep "Written" file.txt , I got all the lines since written is present is with not written.

I also tried grep -x "Written" file.txt and grep -E "Written" file.txt

All the methods gave me the same output

OS: MAC OSx

Answer 1

You can use this awk for non-regex, exact match:

awk '$2 == "Written"' file

127.0.0.1:80 Written

Using gnu -grep (available on OSX via brew installer), you can use a negative lookbehind in -P (PCRE option):

grep -P '(?<!\bNot\h)\bWritten\b' file