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I am trying to write shell script as below to search user inputted word and highlight the word in the search result -

User input:

echo -n -e "What you wanna search:" read userinput

Save the search result in a file

egrep "$input" /var/log/auth.log > result.txt

Display the result column wise with highlighted user input value

column -t result.txt | grep '$userinput' --> (this is not working. It's not highlighted the word)

For example: I am looking for 'root' user in the search result and I want to highlight the 'root' word being highlighted but it's not working.

$ column -t result.txt | grep -n 'root' --> This is working $ column -t result.txt | grep -n '$userinput' --> This is not working

Any idea what's I am doing wrong?

Khondakar
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1 Answers1

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Just add --color=always to your grep command. For instance:

column -t result.txt | grep --color=always '$userinput'

When you call grep interactively, it uses color by default. But when you call it in a shell script, it doesn't use color, so you need to force it with --color=always

SparedWhisle
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