Pattern matching digits does not work in egrep?

Solution 1:

egrep doesn't recognize \d shorthand for digit character class, so you need to use e.g. [0-9].

Moreover, while it's not absolutely necessary in this case, it's good habit to quote the regex to prevent misinterpretation by the shell. Thus, something like this should work:

egrep '[0-9]{7}-[0-9]{10}' file

See also

• egrep mini tutorial

References

• regular-expressions.info/Flavor comparison
  • Flavor note for GNU grep, ed, sed, egrep, awk, emacs
    • Lists the differences between grep vs egrep vs other regex flavors

Solution 2:

For completeness:

Egrep does in fact have support for character classes. The classes are:

• [:alnum:]
• [:alpha:]
• [:cntrl:]
• [:digit:]
• [:graph:]
• [:lower:]
• [:print:]
• [:punct:]
• [:space:]
• [:upper:]
• [:xdigit:]

Example (note the double brackets):

egrep '[[:digit:]]{7}-[[:digit:]]{10}' file

Solution 3:

you can use \d if you pass grep the "perl regex" option, ex:

grep -P "\d{9}"

Solution 4:

Use [0-9] instead of \d. egrep doesn't know \d.