# EGREP

egrep is used to find patterns of characters (strings) within file(s).

If, for example, the file test.txt contains the following sentence:
---------------------------------------------------
This program has NOT been built with Imlib2 support.
Only BMP loading is supported
---------------------------------------------------

Then, typing `egrep -e "BMP | NOT" test.txt` on the screen and pressing the return key will result in the above line, that contains the string 'BMP' and 'NOT', printed on the screen.

Typing `egrep -e "BMP | COLOR" test.txt` or `egrep -e "COLOR | NOT" test.txt` will also result in the above line printed on the screen, as the above sentence contains at least "NOT" in it. "|" stands for the OR operator.

However, typing `egrep -e "BMP + NOT" test.txt` on the screen and pressing the return key won't yield a result, as the string 'BMP' and 'NOT' are not adjoining strings, 'BMP NOT' in the above sentence within the above file.

With this pattern for egrep in mind (i.e., memorised) it becomes easy to interpret the rest of the man page on egrep.