How to Use egrep to Find Multiple Strings in a File?

Below is the example to find multiple strings in a file using the egrep command in Linux or Unix environment.

egrep Command to Find Multiple Strings in a File

In the following example, the egrep command will look for strings Scott, Smith and Phillip in all text files.

egrep 'Scott|Smith|Phillip' *.txt

Output:

emp.txt:1200|Scott|Technology|5500
emp.txt:9500|Smith|Technology|6000
emp.txt:9548|Phillip|IT|8000

To specify a particular file, you can specify the name instead of *.txt. For example:

egrep 'Scott|Smith|Phillip' emp.txt