LOOK(1) 		  BSD 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.

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

     Options:

     -b      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. See sort(1) for more infor
	     mation on sorting files.

     -d      Dictionary character set and order, i.e. only alphanumeric char
	     acters 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

SEE ALSO
     grep(1), sort(1)

COMPATIBILITY
     The original manual page stated that tabs and blank characters partici
     pated in comparisons when the -d option was specified.  This was incor
     rect 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.

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

BSD				 May 13, 2004				   BSD