What is wrong with this GREP?

Question

This is my text file:

line A line B line C

Now I'm trying to find the line that ends with A:

cat foo.txt | grep 'A$'

BTW:

$ grep --version GNU grep 2.6.3

Are you on Windows, perhaps? What end-of-line character is being used? If you run cat -e foot.txt do you see ^M or $? — eduffy
– eduffy, Commented Mar 28, 2015 at 1:34

Avinash Raj · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-28 05:56:46Z

There is nothing wrong with your grep command. But there may be a chance of space characters exists after the last A. so use the below grep command.

grep 'A\s*$' file

\s matches any kind of horizontal or vertical whitespace character.

OR

You could use the POSIX character class [[:space:]] to match any kind of space character.

grep 'A[[:space:]]*$' file

\s only works in newer versions of GNU grep. Use [[:space:]] for portability.

Jotne · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-28 06:41:14Z

If last character is always a single one, this awk should do:

awk '$NF=="A"' file line A

It test if last field equals to A
This will also work if there are hidden spaces/tabs after last character.

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