Hi,

I have a file that contains two lines of text:
small line
LARGE LINE

Let's call this file "test".

When I grep this file for "a", I get, as expected:
$ grep a test
small line

When I grep this file for "A", I get, as expected:
$ grep A test
LARGE LINE

Now, if I grep this file for [a-z], I get:
$ grep [a-z] test
small line
LARGE LINE

Now, _that_ is unexpected! Why on earth does grep return also the line
with only capital letters when the expression to search is "[a-z]"?!
Let me add that my environment variable GREP_OPTIONS is not set.

Any idea?

-- dave

dave_140390@hotmail.com wrote:

> Now, if I grep this file for [a-z], I get:
> $ grep [a-z] test
> small line
> LARGE LINE

Try this:

$ grep '[[:lower:]]' test

and this:

$ LC_ALL=C grep '[a-z]' test

--
All the commands are tested with bash and GNU tools, so they may use
nonstandard features. I try to mention when something is nonstandard (if
I'm aware of that), but I may miss something. Corrections are welcome.

dave_140390@hotmail.com writes:

> Now, if I grep this file for [a-z], I get:
> $ grep [a-z] test
> small line
> LARGE LINE
>
> Now, _that_ is unexpected!


try

echo grep [a-z] test

to see what grep REALLY gets as input.
(Remember, the shell parses meta-characters before grep seel them).