The ABC's of grep - M

M

Use the -m flag to set the max number of lines found for a matching pattern.

Let’s return to our numbers.txt file and duplicate the content so that we have 5 lines:

123456789
123456789
123456789
123456789
123456789

If we wanted to search for the pattern 345, we would run:

$ grep "345" numbers.txt
123456789
123456789
123456789
123456789
123456789

As expected, the grep command will return every line with 345 in it. Add the -m flag to limit it to the max number you define:

grep -m 3 "345" numbers.txt
123456789
123456789
123456789