grep Linux has a search utility which is used for matching content. By default, this will print any lines that match, which can include too many outputs. If you only care about the first match, you can limit the output to only the first line.

grep -m . limiting output with

grep one of the commands -m either --max-count Parametersr, which may solve this problem, but it might not work as you expect.

this will make the parameter grep Stop matching after finding N matching lines, which works great because it will limit the output to one line, which will always contain the first match. we can verify it with -n Flag to print line numbers.

grep -m 1 "foo" file

However, it has some drawbacks that you should be aware of. This N. does not stop after MatchboxThis N. stops after rows, this would be the reason grep to match multiple times on each line, which can be a problem if you use -o flag, which prints each match on a new line.

Also, it’s only N lines per fileSo when used against multiple files it will print out the first matching line for each file.

using head to limit grep output

The alternative is to pipe the output into a separate command, head, which will truncate the input after only N lines. It’s still a bit useful to use -m 1 with grep However, if the match is found early it will stop processing large files.

grep "foo" file_one.txt | head -1

it works with -o Flag to print only the first match, even if there are multiple matches in the file:

However, be careful when using it with multiple files. using the head will print the first matching line in any file. this could be a problem grep Prints the output in the order it processes the files, and you may not know that the files will be processed unless you manually sort them before passing them grep,

Similarly, you can also use tail To print the last matching line.