How can I get egrep to match something that occurs n to m times *but not more*?

[s3a]

If I do


egrep "thin[g]{2,3}" ./list.txt

, it shows me all the occurrences "thin" followed by 2 or more "g"s.

In other words, the above egrep line seems to do the same thing as the following egrep line.:

egrep "thin[g]{2,}" ./list.txt.

I understand that, if there are four or more occurrences of the character g after thin, it can be concluded that are there is subtext that is either [/i]thingg[/i] or thinggg, regardless of how many extra "g"s there are, and that that's why egrep is not ignoring the output with more than three consecutive "g"s after "thin", but how can I get it to behave as I intend for this particular case?

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[s3a]

Technically, it works when I do


egrep "thin[g]{2,3}" ./list.txt | egrep -v "[g]{4,}"

, but how do I make it work by just using regex, without "piping trickery"?

[norobro]

If the words are each on a single line you can use the end of string anchor "$":

egrep "thing{2,3}$" list.txtIf the words are embedded in a string use word boundaries "\b":

egrep -o '\bthing{2,3}\b' list.txtSee man egrep for the -o option.

[vasa1]

Even though it's more convenient and it still works, egrep is deprecated and grep -E is suggested. man grep has this:
In addition, the variant programs egrep, fgrep and rgrep are the same as
grep -E, grep -F, and grep -r, respectively. These variants are
deprecated, but are provided for backward compatibility.

[s3a]

Thank you both! :)