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Display a block of text with vim with offset, like with AWK

Terminal - Display a block of text with vim with offset, like with AWK
vim -e -s -c 'g/start_pattern/+1,/stop_pattern/-1 p' -cq file.txt
2009-08-26 10:22:27
User: syladmin
Functions: vim
0
Up
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Display a block of text with vim with offset, like with AWK

By using vim, you can also filter content on stdout, using vim's extra power, like search pattern offset!

No more awk of course, sorry.

details :

-e ex mode

-s silent

-c 'ex command' : global + start and end pattern + offset print (p)

-cq : quit

Show sample output | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 4 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
awk '/start_pattern/,/stop_pattern/' file.txt
2009-03-28 14:28:59
User: atoponce
Functions: awk
77
Up
Down
Display a block of text with AWK

I find this terribly useful for grepping through a file, looking for just a block of text. There's "grep -A # pattern file.txt" to see a specific number of lines following your pattern, but what if you want to see the whole block? Say, the output of "dmidecode" (as root):

dmidecode | awk '/Battery/,/^$/'

Will show me everything following the battery block up to the next block of text. Again, I find this extremely useful when I want to see whole blocks of text based on a pattern, and I don't care to see the rest of the data in output. This could be used against the '/etc/securetty/user' file on Unix to find the block of a specific user. It could be used against VirtualHosts or Directories on Apache to find specific definitions. The scenarios go on for any text formatted in a block fashion. Very handy.

Comments (6) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
sed -n /start_pattern/,/stop_pattern/p file.txt
2009-10-24 16:35:39
User: pipping
Functions: sed
5
Up
Down
Display a block of text with AWK
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

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