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