Grep for Two or More Expressions

Unfortunately a database of mine crashed. Fortunately, I have log files with the data. I need the timestamp and the data.

The lines in the log files look something like this:

####### collect $TIMESTAMP #########
*GARBAGE
*GARBAGE
*GARBAGE
$ID:=$DATASET
*GARBAGE


It’s been years since I’ve done anything more than a simple grep. I wasn’t even sure which grep I needed… egrep? fgrep? grep?

I can use this regex for the timestamp line:

\#\ collect

I can use this regex for the dataset line:

\:\=

But how can I put them together? It’s probably of no surpise that I can use the ‘|’ operator like so:

egrep '\#\ collect|\:\=' 2010-09-25.log

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-JP