grep and return line continuations?

Question

I want grep to return results through line continuations, ie input file like:

$ cat input.txt
abba \
  jjjj \
  nnnn

$ grep "abba ?" input.txt
abba jjjj nnnn

I can't seem to get it working.

? It seems to work as you get *some* result. Please expand. Isn't the result what you expected? — Jongware, May 31 '15 at 21:54

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 31 '15 at 22:08

1

Maybe you are looking for something like this where you search in your file after replacing slashes with newlines...

tr '\\' '\n' < input.txt | grep something

answered May 31 '15 at 22:08

Mark Setchell

Selecting this as the answer. I ended up doing something like this-- but there is probably a better solution. – user318904 Jun 22 '15 at 21:14

1 Answers1