the care and feeding of fgrep

[Mike Lyons]

This is something that bugs me now and then (before I forget it again :-)...

The man page for the grep family has the following description for fgrep:

		fgrep [ options ] [ strings ] [ files ]

The man page also states "Fgrep patterns are fixed strings; it is fast and 
compact"  My question is, how the heck do you give a list of strings (as im-
plied here) as an arg to fgrep? Every combination of quotes that I've come up 
with always results in fgrep treating all but the first string in a list as a 
filename, with the accompanying "can't open" complaints.  

When I use fgrep, I invariably put the strings into a file and use the -f 
option, but this *really shouldn't* be necessary if the man page is correct.  

Please enlighten me :-)

Peace,
  Mike
-- 
Michael D. Lyons / Nixdorf Computer AG / phone: +49 911 6415 609
Donaustrasse 36 :: D-8500 Nuernberg 60 :: Federal Republic of Germany
EUNET: mike at nixba.uucp   NERV: lyons.nue   OTHERWISE: ...unido!nixba!mike
I'd change the world for the better...if I could get my hands on the source code