Matching lines in two files

Question

Let's say I have two files, file1 and file2.

file1:

passd:xxx
hopla:alli
gnar:gungg
araf:utap

file2:

alli
utap

How can i check what lines/words from file2 match file? Indeed I could probably do it with comm -1 -2 file1 file2 but is it possible to do it with awk?

tried it with that but didnt work – trolkura Dec 17 '15 at 00:41 — trolkura, Dec 17 '15 at 00:41

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

With awk, you can start with what @jasonwryan suggested Compare two files...

But modify it to suit your needs. Here is what you can do on the command line, with results:

$ awk -F: 'FNR==NR {arr[$0];next} $2 in arr' file2 file1
hopla:alli
araf:utap

you specified file2 was the list with words to search for
file1 was the large text file to search in
-F: specifies delimiter is colon :
$2 since the field to match is in this case file1's field 2
when match occurs, default action to print the line, thus you see the two matching lines

Additional info

AWK Wiki ComparingTwoFiles example.

this prints the whole line , i would need to print just the words that match — trolkura, Dec 17 '15 at 09:31

Kiran · Answer 2 · 2015-12-17T01:42:33.433

0

This command could help you:

cat file1 | awk '{FS=":" print $0}' | xargs grep file2

I'm not sure if the diff command could help. But if it is installed, I would use it: diff file1 file2

edited Dec 17 '15 at 01:42

answered Dec 17 '15 at 01:32

Kiran

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Both the `cat` and `grep` are redundant here: Awk reads from files and does pattern matching... – jasonwryan Dec 17 '15 at 01:39

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 17 '15 at 01:38

If having issues with grep,

Try dos2unix file1 file2 beforehand to remove any problematic non-Unix formatting that could prevent grep from working
as @drewbenn mentioned, grep -f file2 file1

You should then successfully see the matching lines:

hopla:alli
araf:utap

Matching lines in two files

3 Answers3

Additional info