Unix command: cat filename |& grep <string>

I wrote this command down, and I forgot what it does.  How do I found
out what the "|&" does.  I KNOW I can find out...but, what I *really*
want to know is how to use google (efficiently) to find this.  Other
examples are:

perl -v

This would give me the version of perl currently being used...or,

perl /u /U

These are only examples...I'd like to know how to look for
command-line switches, which include special characters like: - & " |
/ \ { } > < %...etc.

Again, lets say I entered the following search string into google:
"{n,m}" "\x1B" "\S" -"-v"

This means that I want an exact match on:
{n,m} and \x1B and \S
but I don't want a match on:
-v

I'd expect a page like this to come up:
http://www.blazonry.com/perl/regexp_ref.php

Consequently, if I add ANOTHER key word to the above search string:
"{n,m}" "\x1B" "\S" -"-v" character

I get MORE search results.  Shouldn't that narrow the search?

Now, I can simply search for:
"More Special Character Stuff"

And the correct page if found...but, it's all text based.

Being a programmer myself, I know that this kind of stuff can be
rather difficult to incorporate in a search engine.  I'd just like to
know if here are any "tricks" in searching more efficiently for syntax
and special character switches.

Thanks

Sounds like your doing a search for Linux/Unix commands. I would try
searching for "Unix Commands" "Unix Command Line" and "Unix command
line reference" and "Unix command syntax" replace unix with linux
where wanted and try including and removing the quotes. I think that
will thrust u on ur way.

   Also try www.tldp.org TheLinuxDocumentationProject... Lots of reading there.
I wouldn't recommend searching for the switches and triggers
themselves as your likely to yield a lot of false positives.
Additionally you may want to search like "Perl command syntax" or
"Grep command syntax" or "Grep Switches"

By the Way the | is a pipe which says take the output/result of this
command and feed it directly into the next command. like DIR to list
all the directories and | pipe that result into another command GREP
to search for only the lines that contain the word FILE in them. The &
is a unix directive that says run this command in the background as a
seperate process. Try running a long LS with the & (in front of LS)
and as soon as you hit enter you'll have your command prompt but your
system will be multitasking that command in the background.
Also I recommend reading about regular expressions as a lot of the
syntax of those is applicable all over unix ; }

Hope that helps.

John

The main thing I'm looking for is a way to search for special
characters like this.  I understand what the command does...but it
doesn't really pertain to this question, I was just using it as an
example.  FYI: it suppresses the STDOUT in csh.  so, if the filename
doesn't exist, you don't get an error.  I'm not sure it does this by
sending STDOUT to the background, or not.

Anyway, the |& is such a "rare" use of the command, it's practically
IMPOSSIBLE to search for it.  Even using the key words that you
used...you would have to dig through 100's of pages until you ran
across this.  I wish you could put it in quotes like: "|&" and google
would search for an exact phrase.  But even that's impossible.  Google
needs to have a way to search for EXACT phrases.  Their "exact" phrase
searching is not EXACT!  :)