On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Don Sparish wrote: > Is Solaris Ass Backward or what. I've put all GNU utils on my Solaris box. I'll be retiring it soon. > I can get an exact string match in AIX, Linux, HPUX but not in SlowLaris. > > What I have tried so far, > > grep -x returns a usages messages > /usr/xpg4/bin/grep -x doesn't work I don't know why that is happening to you. On my Solaris 8 box, the old /usr/xpg4/bin/grep is there and working and it accepts -x. Man page: man -M /usr/man grep That includes info for both the xpg4 and /usr/bin versions. The xpg4 version can be used in a few ways: /usr/xpg4/bin/grep [ -E | -F ] [ -c | -l | -q ] [ -bhinsvwx ] -e pattern_list ... [ -f pattern_file ] ... [ file ... ] /usr/xpg4/bin/grep [ -E | -F ] [ -c | -l | -q ] [ -bhinsvwx ] [ -e pattern_list ... ] -f pattern_file ... [ file ... ] /usr/xpg4/bin/grep [ -E | -F ] [ -c | -l | -q ] [ -bhinsvwx ] pattern [ file ... ] > grep -e or -E returns a usages message > > /user/xpg4/bin/grep -e or -E doesn't work Not because of misspelling "user"? It works for me. > grep '\<string\>' doesn't work > > grep ^"string"$ doesn't work. > > What I am trying to do is search an environment variable such as PATH to > see if a directory already exist in the variable. > > Anybody figured out how to find exact matches within a string on > SlowLaris? This works for me on Solaris 8 SPARC from the command line in both bash and tcsh: echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n' | /usr/xpg4/bin/grep -x '/usr/openwin/bin' That works here, so I'm thinking your /usr/xpg4/bin/grep was replaced by something nonstandard. Check into it. Make sure your system wasn't attacked and altered. If you are using SPARC and want to try my grep file, I can send it to you. Mike