Give parameters to grep command

Question

I want to find some words from a file. I use grep command on linux.

grep "word1" original.file

But there are lots of words to find and they are in "words.file" If it is possible I want to give parameter to grep command. I will give words which are in the "words.file" to the grep command as parameters and find these words in the "original.file"

Can I do that ?

Answer 1

man grep helps you: grep has the -f parameter, which specifies that the patterns shall be read from a file.

grep -f words.file original.file

Mind, though, that the words in words.file must be one-per-line, but tr ' ' '\n' helps you with that.

Answer 2

Try

grep -e word1 -e word2 -e word3 original.file

If you want to build the -e word-things from words.file try

eval $(echo -n 'grep '; while read word; do echo -n "-e '$word' "; done < words.file; echo 'original.file')

Perhaps easier and better (but one grep process per word):

xargs -I '{}' grep -e '{}' original.file < words.file