LOOK(1) |
FreeBSD General Commands Manual |
LOOK(1) |
NAME
look —
display lines beginning with a given string
SYNOPSIS
look |
[ -df][ -t termchar] string [ file ...] |
DESCRIPTION
The
look utility displays any lines in
file which contain
string as a prefix. As
look performs a binary search, the lines in
file must be sorted.
If file is not specified, the file /usr/share/dict/words is used, only alphanumeric characters are compared and the case of alphabetic characters is ignored.
The following options are available:
-
-d
-
Dictionary character set and order, i.e., only alphanumeric characters are compared.
-
-f
-
Ignore the case of alphabetic characters.
-
-t
-
Specify a string termination character, i.e., only the characters in
string up to and including the first occurrence of
termchar are compared.
ENVIRONMENT
The
LANG,
LC_ALL and
LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of the
look utility. Their effect is described in
environ(7).
FILES
-
/usr/share/dict/words
-
the dictionary
EXIT STATUS
The
look utility exits 0 if one or more lines were found and displayed, 1 if no lines were found, and >1 if an error occurred.
COMPATIBILITY
The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters participated in comparisons when the
-d option was specified. This was incorrect and the current man page matches the historic implementation.
HISTORY
A
look utility appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
Lines are not compared according to the current locale's collating order. Input files must be sorted with
LC_COLLATE set to ‘
C
’.