Display a block of text with AWK

awk '/start_pattern/,/stop_pattern/' file.txt

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.

By: atoponce

2009-03-28 14:28:59

awk

3 Alternatives + Submit Alt

Display a block of text with AWK
This is sample output - yours may be different.
7

sed -n /start_pattern/,/stop_pattern/p file.txt

pipping · 2009-10-24 16:35:39 8
Display a block of text: multi-line grep with perl

-n reads input, line by line, in a loop sending to $_ Equivalent to while () { mycode } -e execute the following quoted string (i.e. do the following on the same line as the perl command) the elipses .. operator behaves like a range, remembering the state from line to line.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

perl -ne 'print if /start_pattern/../stop_pattern/' file.txt

SunKing2 · 2018-07-24 03:23:12 428
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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$cat file.txt
begin
here too
start_pattern
pipo
et
molo
font
du
ski
stop_pattern
plus
more
here

$vim -e -s -c 'g/start_pattern/+1,/stop_pattern/-1 p' -cq file.txt
pipo
et
molo
font
du
ski
```
0

vim -e -s -c 'g/start_pattern/+1,/stop_pattern/-1 p' -cq file.txt

syladmin · 2009-08-26 10:22:27 6

What Others Think

Very nice. dmidecode | awk '/Core/,/^$/'

Williebee · 842 weeks and 1 day ago

Awesome! Awk is such a powerful tool and I always wish I knew it better.

philiph · 842 weeks and 1 day ago

Thanks a lot

megerdin · 842 weeks and 1 day ago

Nice! I like using this for xml files.

tajohnson · 836 weeks and 2 days ago

because your '^$' is included in the pattern it'll also be output. You can prevent the empty line being output with the following: awk '/foo/,/^$/{if ($0 > 0) print}' Also, if the data is structured in a consistant way you can set RS to the particular record, ie: awk '{RS="Cell"}/MY_AP/' which will output the particular record for the ESSID "MY_AP".

khayyam · 634 weeks and 2 days ago

hmmmm ... the last command was chomped, I assume as I used a subshell ... anyhow it should read (without subshell): iwlist wlan0 scan |awk '{RS="Cell"}/MY_AP/'

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Does not work

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What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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