Egrep: difference between the option -w and \b

Linux
,
1

Is there difference between:

egrep -w "word" filename
egrep "\bword\b" filename

or both are equal?

2

Yes, they are same. For example, ‘\bFOO\b’ matches the separate word ‘FOO’:

grep -w 'FOO' input.txt
grep '\bFOO\b' input.txt
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