This is really one of the most elementary uses for grep. Here are 10 examples to help sharpen your skills. The options and patterns you can use with grep are varied and diverse. I’ll focus on regular grep for the purpose of this article, which is intended as a beginning tutorial for this handy and reliable command. The latter two have different methods for working with characters and search strings. There are multiple versions of grep plain regular grep, egrep (extended grep) and fgrep (fixed prep). Windows search is not without certain charms, but when I need to find files or their contents, or search for specific system information, the grep command in Linux never ceases to amaze me through its power and versatility.