Regex with sed, search across multiple lines
10,675
When using '/FIRST_LINE_REGEX/,/LAST_LINE_REGEX/'
each line is still processed separately, to concatenate lines you need to use the hold space or the N
command to append the next line to the pattern space. Here is one option:
cat add | sed -rn '/FIRST_LINE_REGEX/{:a;N;/LAST_LINE_REGEX/{/SOME_REGEX/p;d};ba}'
Commented version:
cat add | sed -rn '/FIRST_LINE_REGEX/ { # if line matches /FIRST_LINE_REGEX/
:a # create label a
N # read next line into pattern space
/LAST_LINE_REGEX/ { # if line matches /LAST_LINE_REGEX/
/SOME_REGEX/p # print if line matches /SOME_REGEX/
d # return to start
}
ba # return to label a
}'
Comments
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Marcin Król almost 2 years
I'd like to concatenate a few lines, perform a regex match on them and print them. I tried to do that with sed.
Namely, I used:
cat add | sed -rn '/FIRST_LINE_REGEX/,/LAST_LINE_REGEX/s/SOME_REGEX/&/p'
It prints only the lines that match SOME_REGEX while I expect it to concatenate the lines from the range between FIRST_LINE and LAST_LINE and print the concatenation if it matches SOME_REGEX.