$ cat p P12345 P123 P12 P1 S1 S12 S123 S1234 S12345 P1234 P123456 P1234z P12345a P12345abc
$ cat p | egrep -ce '^P[[:digit:]]{5}' 4 $ cat p | grep -ce '^P[[:digit:]]{5}' 0 OH OH .. should be (upper case) E :-) $ cat p | grep -ce '^P[[:digit:]]{5}' 0 On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 7:43 PM, Rich Shepard <rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote: > On Sat, 4 Jul 2015, Pete Lancashire wrote: > > > don't forget to end the regexp stop with a non-digit if you dont > > P12345<anything> will pass. > > There is content after the Pnnnnn; all I want is a count of the number > of > lines beginning with Pnnnnn. > > Rich > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug