[SOLVED] XOR operator with grep when we grep on 2 patterns

Issue

I am using grep to find match of 2 patterns with condition OR like this, classically:

grep -E 'C_matrix|F_matrix' triplot_XC_dev_for_right_order_with_FoM.py | wc -l

I would like now to exclude the cases when both pattern are matched on the same line, i.e I would like to use a XOR operator with grep.

How can I do this operation ? Maybe another trick is possible (I think about grep -v to exclude but this would be nice to do this operation in ony one command line with grep -E).

Solution

When you want to make such a special case, it is better to make use of awk:

 $ awk '(/C_matrix/ && !/F_matrix/) || (!/C_matrix/ && !/F_matrix/)' file

Using GNU awk, you can use the bit-manipulation function xor:

$ awk 'xor(/C_matrix/,/F_matrix/)' file

Answered By - kvantour