grep for special characters in Unix

Question

I have a log file (application.log) which might contain the following string of normal & special characters on multiple lines:

*^%Q&$*&^@$&*!         


        

Answer 1

Tell grep to treat your input as fixed string using -F option.

grep -F '*^%Q&$*&^@$&*!^@$*&^&^*&^&' application.log

Option -n is required to get the line number,

grep -Fn '*^%Q&$*&^@$&*!^@$*&^&^*&^&' application.log