Title: exact string matching for multiple strings with grep
Tags: grep;string
Question: I am looking for exact string matches for multiple strings using grep.
Lets say I want to find the following three strings in a large data file that has about 10 Million rows and 10 columns.  I want to query the file so I find all the rows that have the following exact strings in them.  Thankfully only 1 column has 'rs numbers' so I don't need to specify the column:
rs689653
I tried the following expression and am returned all options that have these strings in them.  In some cases, I'll see rows that have something like 'rs123456', where as I just want rows with the exact matches:
grep -E 'rs123|rs246|rs689653' queriedfile.txt
Then I tried the following expression with ^ and $ but received back NO matches to my query (and I know there are some).
grep -E '^rs123$|^rs246$|^rs689653$' queriedfile.txt

Here is the accepted answer: You can add the -w command line option to restrict the match to whole words
$ printf 'rs123456\nrs246\n' | grep -wE 'rs123|rs246|rs689653'
or add word-anchors explicitly
$ printf 'rs123456\nrs246\n' | grep -E '\b(rs123|rs246|rs689653)\b'
(you were close with ^ and $ - but those are line-anchors).
Comment for this answer: Will i still be returned the full line that the string is in?  (that's what I want!)
Comment for this answer: Actually yes! I will be returned the full line! I just tried it! Thank you!  I did grep -wE 'rs123|rs246|rs689653' ' queriedfile.txt

Here is another answer: If you want exact string matching:
grep -Fwf <(printf "%s\n" rs123 rs246 rs689653) file
Where -F gives you exact string matching (no regex), -w is whole word, and -f reads the "patterns" from the file supplied by the process substitution.
If you have more words to match so that the printf part gets quite long, you can use a shell array to hold them:
words=( rs123 rs246 rs689653 )
grep -Fwf <(printf "%s\n" "${words[@]}") file
Alternatively, awk might work for your needs:
awk -F '\t' '
$6 == "rs123"
$6 == "rs246"
$6 == "rs689653"
' file
Replace your actual field separator and field number as appropriate.

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