| LOOK(1) | General Commands Manual | LOOK(1) | 
NAME
 look — display lines beginning with a given string
SYNOPSIS
| look | [-df] [-t termchar] string [file] | 
 
DESCRIPTION
 The 
look utility displays any lines in 
file which contain 
string as a prefix. As 
look performs a binary search, the lines in 
file must be sorted.
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.
Options:
- 
-d
- 
Dictionary character set and order, i.e. only alphanumeric characters are compared.
- 
-f
- 
Ignore the case of alphabetic characters.
- 
-t
- 
Specify a string termination character, i.e. only the characters in string up to and including the first occurrence of termchar are compared.
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.
 
FILES
- 
/usr/share/dict/words
- 
the dictionary
 
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.
HISTORY
 look appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.