help with grep



hi.

i'm trying to grep a line that starts with a specific number from a file using a loop. the problem is:

grep -w $i filename (e.g. for i=1)

gives me back

line 1
line 10
line 11
...
and so forth. i only want 1 (and not 11, 12, 13. and so forth).

i need a loop that goes up to a large value, so i don't want to restrict the number of characters i'm searching for. i just want to match whole words and not letters within words. i thought the -w flag did that, but it's not. i also tried grep \<1\> to search for just "1" but i get no results back.


thanks for your help!.

that should work,


code:
>cat a
1
2
11
12
1


code:
>i=1
>grep -w $i a
1
1