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I have a file containing random codes. Each code has ten characters in it, and I am trying to grep codes in the file that have at least 2 occurrences of a character. I am doing this:

grep DD* [filename]

This finds codes with 2 occurrences of the character 'D', but it also shows codes that have just 1 occurrence of 'D'. How can I change my regular expression to only show codes with 2 occurrences?

Mat
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user1163073
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1 Answers1

9

* in a regular expression is a quantifier meaning the previous entity repeated 0 or more times.

Just remove the quantifier:

grep DD filename

Note that the above will also match lines with 3 or more occurrences of “D”.

In case you want any character, not only “D”, 2 or more times:

grep -E '(.)\1' filename

If you want “D” exactly 2 times:

grep -E '([^D]|^)DD([^D]|$)' filename
manatwork
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