how to use && with grep in bash - linux

Question

I want to check if multiple lines in a file exist in bash.
so for that I use grep -q which works with only one line:
if grep -q string1 "/path/to/file";then
echo 'exists'
else
echo 'does not exist'
fi
I tried many things in various combinations, for example:
if grep -q [ string1 ] && grep -q [ string2 ] "path/to/file";then
I also tried it with -E:
grep -E 'pattern1' filename | grep -E 'pattern2'
but nothing seems to work. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Rather than running multiple grep commands you can use this gnu-awk command to assert presence of multiple strings in a file:
awk -v RS='\\Z' '/string1/ && /string2/ && /string3/{e=1} END{exit !e}' file &&
echo 'exists' || echo 'does not exist'
RS=\Z will make awk read all the input in a single record separator
Using && between multiple search terms will make sure all the search words exist in input file
This will print exists only if all 3 search terms exists in the input file.

Answer 2

since #iruvar hasn't posted his comment as answer, i'll put it here:
grep -q string_1 file && grep -q string_2 file
now, here is my contribution. is #anubhava's more computationally complex awk answer, which reads the file only once, any faster than #iruvar's simpler answer, which reads the file three times?
awk 11.730 s
grep && grep 0.258 s
no.
this surely will depend on the speed of the filesystem vs the cpu, and on how much caching goes on, but on my system, which is probably a typical B+/A- workstation, grep kw1 file && grep kw2 file && grep kw3 file is ~50x as fast as #anubhava's awk solution. this held true both on ssd and spindle raid. (details: test file was 5,000,000 lines, 160M, and had kw1 on the first line, kw2 on the 2.5 millionth, and kw3 on the 5 millionth.)
some easy optimization is possible, for example, if you can solve your problem by matching whole lines, do so (with grep -x); it's twice as fast in this case.
for many (e.g., >1,000) files, it is faster to use grep -l and xargs:
grep -l kw1 *.txt | xargs grep -l kw2 | xargs grep -q kw3
as opposed to a loop:
for f in *.txt; do
grep -q kw1 $f && grep -q kw2 $f && grep -q kw3 $f
done
with the same test file, grep -l | xargs grep took 0.258 s, just like grep && grep. with two test files, it was still no faster than grep && grep. with 2000 test files of 5,000 lines each, none of which contained any matches, grep -l | xargs grep was ~10x as faster as grep && grep.

Answer 3

There are a couple ambiguities in your question, but assuming you want pattern_1 and pattern_2 to exist in a file (not on the same line) then you can do this.
for file in *; do
egrep -q pattern_1 $file && egrep -q pattern_2 $file && echo $file
done

Answer 4

With grep -p you can match multiply patterns in the same line:
grep -P '(?=.*string1)(?=.*string2)' file
The above will print lines that matches string1 and string2.
(?=...) is a positive lookaheads which matches a pattern without making it a part of the match.
And -z will slurp the whole file:
% seq 1 100 | grep -qzP '(?=.*1)(?=.*5)'; echo $?
0
% seq 1 100 | grep -qzP '(?=.*1)(?=.*a)'; echo $?
1

Answer 5

You can do it like this:
if grep -q 'string1' /path/to/file; then
if grep -q 'string2' /path/to/file; then
echo exists
else
echo 'does not exist'
else
echo 'does not exist'
fi
Or:
grep -q 'string1' /path/to/file &&
grep -q 'string2' /path/to/file &&
echo exists ||
echo 'does not exist'

Answer 6

you can use "-q" to search using grep
if grep -q string1 "/path/to/file" && grep -q string2 "/path/to/file";then
echo 'exists'
else
echo 'does not exist'
fi