search a string in a file as ignoring the lines beginning with #

Question

I want to find a string such as "qwertty=" in a file with "awk" or "grep" but I don't want to see the lines with #. Please see the example

grep -ni "qwertty"   /aaa/bbb
798:#  * qwertty - enable/disable 
1222:#qwertty=1
1223:qwertty=2  
1224:#qwertty=3

I want to find the line 1223. What should be the search query for this purpose?

Answer 1

grep -ni '^qwertty=' /aaa/bbb

If you want more flexibility (no hash anywhere in the line, for example, and perhaps blanks before the keyword, and maybe the keyword embedded inside a bigger word, and perhaps blanks around the '=' sign), then you need a more complex expression:

grep -ni '^[^#]*qwertty[^#]*=[^#]*$' /aaa/bbb

Answer 2

awk '/^#/ {next} /qwertty/' afile

Answer 3

grep -ni "qwertty"   /aaa/bbb|grep -v '^#'