NAME

       look — display lines beginning with a given string

SYNOPSIS

       look [-bdf] [-t termchar] string [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

       The look utility displays any lines in file which contain string as a prefix.

       If  file  is  not  specified,  the  file  /usr/share/dict/words is used, only alphanumeric characters are
       compared and the case of alphabetic characters is ignored.

       The following options are available:

       -b, --binary
               Use a binary search on the given word list. If you are ignoring case with  -f  or  ignoring  non-
               alphanumeric  characters with -d, the file must be sorted in the same way. Please note that these
               options are the default if no filename is given. See sort(1)  for  more  information  on  sorting
               files.

       -d, --alphanum
               Dictionary character set and order, i.e., only alphanumeric characters are compared.

       -f, --ignore-case
               Ignore the case of alphabetic characters.

       -t, --terminate termchar
               Specify  a  string termination character, i.e., only the characters in string up to and including
               the first occurrence of termchar are compared.

ENVIRONMENT

       The LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution  of  the  look  utility.   Their
       effect is described in environ(7).

FILES

       /usr/share/dict/words  the dictionary

EXIT STATUS

       The  look utility exits 0 if one or more lines were found and displayed, 1 if no lines were found, and >1
       if an error occurred.

COMPATIBILITY

       The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters participated in comparisons  when  the  -d
       option was specified.  This was incorrect and the current man page matches the historic implementation.

       look uses a linear search by default instead of a binary search, which is what most other implementations
       use by default.

       The -a and --alternative flags are ignored for compatibility.

SEE ALSO

       grep(1), sort(1)

HISTORY

       A look utility appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

BUGS

       Lines  are  not  compared  according to the current locale's collating order.  Input files must be sorted
       with LC_COLLATE set to ‘C’.

Debian                                            July 17, 2004                                          LOOK(1)