xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/look/look.1 (revision a866e170777b42fd7921eadd6e7e664f3a031d60)
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32.\"     @(#)look.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/14/93
33.\" $FreeBSD$
34.\"
35.Dd July 17, 2004
36.Dt LOOK 1
37.Os
38.Sh NAME
39.Nm look
40.Nd display lines beginning with a given string
41.Sh SYNOPSIS
42.Nm
43.Op Fl df
44.Op Fl t Ar termchar
45.Ar string
46.Op Ar
47.Sh DESCRIPTION
48The
49.Nm
50utility displays any lines in
51.Ar file
52which contain
53.Ar string
54as a prefix.
55As
56.Nm
57performs a binary search, the lines in
58.Ar file
59must be sorted.
60.Pp
61If
62.Ar file
63is not specified, the file
64.Pa /usr/share/dict/words
65is used, only alphanumeric characters are compared and the case of
66alphabetic characters is ignored.
67.Pp
68The following options are available:
69.Bl -tag -width indent
70.It Fl d
71Dictionary character set and order, i.e., only alphanumeric characters
72are compared.
73.It Fl f
74Ignore the case of alphabetic characters.
75.It Fl t
76Specify a string termination character, i.e., only the characters
77in
78.Ar string
79up to and including the first occurrence of
80.Ar termchar
81are compared.
82.El
83.Sh ENVIRONMENT
84The
85.Ev LANG , LC_ALL
86and
87.Ev LC_CTYPE
88environment variables affect the execution of the
89.Nm
90utility.
91Their effect is described in
92.Xr environ 7 .
93.Sh FILES
94.Bl -tag -width /usr/share/dict/words -compact
95.It Pa /usr/share/dict/words
96the dictionary
97.El
98.Sh EXIT STATUS
99The
100.Nm
101utility exits 0 if one or more lines were found and displayed,
1021 if no lines were found, and >1 if an error occurred.
103.Sh COMPATIBILITY
104The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters participated
105in comparisons when the
106.Fl d
107option was specified.
108This was incorrect and the current man page matches the historic
109implementation.
110.Sh SEE ALSO
111.Xr grep 1 ,
112.Xr sort 1
113.Sh HISTORY
114A
115.Nm
116utility appeared in
117.At v7 .
118.Sh BUGS
119Lines are not compared according to the current locale's collating
120order.
121Input files must be sorted with
122.Ev LC_COLLATE
123set to
124.Ql C .
125