How can I exclude one word with grep?

Question

I need something like:

grep ^\"unwanted_word\"XXXXXXXX

Answer 1

The right solution is to use grep -v "word" file, with its awk equivalent:

awk '!/word/' file

However, if you happen to have a more complex situation in which you want, say, XXX to appear and YYY not to appear, then awk comes handy instead of piping several greps:

awk '/XXX/ && !/YYY/' file
#    ^^^^^    ^^^^^^
# I want it      |
#            I don't want it

You can even say something more complex. For example: I want those lines containing either XXX or YYY, but not ZZZ:

awk '(/XXX/ || /YYY/) && !/ZZZ/' file

etc.