How To Install grep on Ubuntu
Posted on April 1, 2023 (Last modified on May 20, 2023 )
3 minutes • 444 words
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install grep on Ubuntu.
What is grep
grep is:
‘grep’ is a utility to search for text in files; it can be used from the command line or in scripts. Even if you don’t want to use it, other packages on your system probably will.
The GNU family of grep utilities may be the “fastest grep in the west”. GNU grep is based on a fast lazy-state deterministic matcher (about twice as fast as stock Unix egrep) hybridized with a Boyer-Moore-Gosper search for a fixed string that eliminates impossible text from being considered by the full regexp matcher without necessarily having to look at every character. The result is typically many times faster than Unix grep or egrep. (Regular expressions containing backreferencing will run more slowly, however.)
There are three methods to install grep on Ubuntu. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install grep Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install grep using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install grep
Install grep Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install grep using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install grep
Install grep Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install grep using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install grep
How To Uninstall grep on Ubuntu
To uninstall only the grep package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove grep
Uninstall grep And Its Dependencies
To uninstall grep and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove grep
Remove grep Configurations and Data
To remove grep configuration and data from Ubuntu we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge grep
Remove grep configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove grep configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge grep
Dependencies
grep have the following dependencies:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install grep package on Ubuntu using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.