System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (FNS and NIS+)

The `nismatch` and `nisgrep` Commands

The nismatch and nisgrep commands search through NIS+ tables for entries that match a particular string or regular expression, respectively. They display either the entries themselves or a count of how many entries matched. The differences between the nismatch and nisgrep commands are highlighted in Table 19–6 below.

Table 19–6 Characteristics of nismatch and nisgrep


Characteristics	nismatch	nisgrep
Search criteria	Accepts text only	Accepts regular expressions
Speed	Faster	Slower
Searches through	Searchable columns only	All columns, whether searchable or not
Syntax of search criteria	`column=string ... tablename[ column= string,...], tablename`	`column=exp ... tablename`

The tasks and examples in this section describe the syntax for both commands.

To use either command, you must have read access to the table you are searching through.

The examples in this section are based on the values in the following table, named depts.doc.com. Only the first two columns are searchable.

Name (S)	Site (S)	Name
R&D	SanFran	kuznetsov
Sales	SanFran	jhill
Manf-1	Emeryville	hosteen
Manf-2	Sausalito	lincoln
Shipping-1	Emeryville	tsosulu
Shipping-2	Sausalito	katabami
Service	Sparks	franklin

About Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are combinations of text and symbols that you can use to search for special configurations of column values. For example, the regular expression `Hello' searches for a value that begins with Hello. When using a regular expression in the command line, be sure to enclose it in quotes, since many of the regular expression symbols have special meaning to the Bourne and C shells. For example:

rootmaster% nisgrep -h greeting='Hello' phrases.doc.com.

The regular expression symbols are summarized in Table 19–7, below.

Table 19–7 Regular Expression Symbols


Symbol	Description
`^string`	Find a value that begins with string.
`string $`	Find a value that ends with `string`.
.	Find a value that has a number characters equal to the number of periods.
`[chars]`	Find a value that contains any of the characters in the brackets.
`*expr`	Find a value that has zero or more matches of the expr.
`+`	Find something that appears one or more times.
`?`	Find any value.
`\'s-char'`	Find a special character, such as ? or $.
`x \| y`	Find a character that is either `x` or `y.`

Syntax

To search through the first column, use:

nismatch string tablename  
nisgrep reg-exp tablename

To search through a particular column, use:

nismatch column=string tablename
nisgrep column=reg-exp tablename

To search through multiple columns, use:

nismatch column=string tablename ...\
nismatch [column=string,...],tablename
nisgrep column=reg-exp ... \
   tablename

Table 19–8 nismatch and nisgrep Options


Option	Description
`-c`	Count. Instead of the entries themselves, displays a count of the entries that matched the search criteria.
`-h`	Header. Displays a header line above the entries, listing the name of each column.
`-M`	Master. Displays only the entries of the table stored on the master server. This ensures you get the most up-to-date information and should be used only for debugging.

Searching the First Column

To search for a particular value in the first column of a table, simply enter the first column value and a tablename. In nismatch, the value must be a string. In nisgrep, the value must be a regular expression.

nismatch [-h] string tablename
nisgrep [-h] reg-expression tablename

This example searches through the depts table for all the entries whose first column has a value of R&D:

rootmaster% nismatch -h `R&D' depts.doc.com.
rootmaster% nisgrep -h `R&D' depts.doc.com.

Note –

Quotes are used in the 'R&D' expression above to prevent the shell from interpreting the ampersand (&) as a metacharacter.

Searching a Particular Column

To search through a particular column other than the first, use the following syntax:

nismatch column=string tablename
nisgrep column=reg-expression tablename

This example searches through the depts table for all the entries whose second column has a value of SanFran:

rootmaster% nismatch -h Site=SanFran depts.doc.com.
rootmaster% nisgrep -h Site=SanFran depts.doc.com.

Searching Multiple Columns

To search for entries with matches in two or more columns, use the following syntax:

nismatch [-h] [column=string, ... \
 column=string,...],tablename
nisgrep [-h] column=reg-exp ... \
 tablename

This example searches for entries whose second column has a value of SanFran and whose third column has a value of jhill:

rootmaster% nismatch -h [Site=SanFran,Name=jhill], depts.doc.com.
rootmaster% nisgrep -h Site=SanFran Name=jhill depts.doc.com.