An extended version of the Unixgrep command. Egrep accepts extended regular expressions (REs) including "*" following multi-character REs "+" (one or more maTChes) "?" (zero or one maTChes) "|" separating two REs maTChes either. REs may be bracketed with (). Despite its additional complexity, egrep is usually faster than fgrep or grep. (2004-07-20)