How can I force grep to only return files and ignore directories?

Question

I'm trying to use grep to automatically locate the bibtex program in the user's bin folder.

The problem is, it frequently returns a directory with the name bibtex, which means that the script fails to automatically run the command.

How can I force grep (or indeed the locate command) to automatically ignore directories?

EDIT: The current command is: locate bibtex | grep "/bibtex$" -d skip | head -n1

Answer 1

The find command?

find /bin -name bibtex -type f

Looks for a file name "bibtex" of type "f", which is a regular file.

Answer 2

locate --basename '\bibtex' --limit 1

Eliminates the need for grep and head, but still doesn't solve the issue of whether the result is a directory.

Why don't you do:

type -P bibtex

which will look in the PATH for a program by that name?

Answer 3

I don't understand exactly so maybe my solution is wrong: why don't you use which? Or bibtex isn't in PATH?

Answer 4

Sigh, not my cleanest, but it works. perl -ne 'chomp($f=$_);print if !-d $f'

which makes your command locate bibtex | perl -ne 'chomp($f=$_);print if !-d $f' | grep "/bibtex$" -d skip | head -n1