xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/look/look.1 (revision 1f4bcc459a76b7aa664f3fd557684cd0ba6da352)
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28.\"     @(#)look.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/14/93
29.\" $FreeBSD$
30.\"
31.Dd July 17, 2004
32.Dt LOOK 1
33.Os
34.Sh NAME
35.Nm look
36.Nd display lines beginning with a given string
37.Sh SYNOPSIS
38.Nm
39.Op Fl df
40.Op Fl t Ar termchar
41.Ar string
42.Op Ar
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Nm
46utility displays any lines in
47.Ar file
48which contain
49.Ar string
50as a prefix.
51As
52.Nm
53performs a binary search, the lines in
54.Ar file
55must be sorted.
56.Pp
57If
58.Ar file
59is not specified, the file
60.Pa /usr/share/dict/words
61is used, only alphanumeric characters are compared and the case of
62alphabetic characters is ignored.
63.Pp
64The following options are available:
65.Bl -tag -width indent
66.It Fl d , -alphanum
67Dictionary character set and order, i.e., only alphanumeric characters
68are compared.
69.It Fl f , -ignore-case
70Ignore the case of alphabetic characters.
71.It Fl t , -terminate Ar termchar
72Specify a string termination character, i.e., only the characters
73in
74.Ar string
75up to and including the first occurrence of
76.Ar termchar
77are compared.
78.El
79.Sh ENVIRONMENT
80The
81.Ev LANG , LC_ALL
82and
83.Ev LC_CTYPE
84environment variables affect the execution of the
85.Nm
86utility.
87Their effect is described in
88.Xr environ 7 .
89.Sh FILES
90.Bl -tag -width /usr/share/dict/words -compact
91.It Pa /usr/share/dict/words
92the dictionary
93.El
94.Sh EXIT STATUS
95The
96.Nm
97utility exits 0 if one or more lines were found and displayed,
981 if no lines were found, and >1 if an error occurred.
99.Sh COMPATIBILITY
100The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters participated
101in comparisons when the
102.Fl d
103option was specified.
104This was incorrect and the current man page matches the historic
105implementation.
106.Pp
107The
108.Fl a
109and
110.Fl -alternative
111flags are ignored for compatibility.
112.Sh SEE ALSO
113.Xr grep 1 ,
114.Xr sort 1
115.Sh HISTORY
116A
117.Nm
118utility appeared in
119.At v7 .
120.Sh BUGS
121Lines are not compared according to the current locale's collating
122order.
123Input files must be sorted with
124.Ev LC_COLLATE
125set to
126.Ql C .
127