Question: I'd like to print a single line directly following a line that contains a matching pattern.
My version of sed will not take the following syntax (it bombs out on +1p) which would seem like a simple solution:
sed -n '/ABC/,+1p' infile
I assume awk would be better to do multiline processing, but I am not sure how to do it.
Never use the word "pattern" in this context as it is ambiguous. Always use "string" or "regexp" (or in shell "globbing pattern"), whichever it is you really mean. See How do I find the text that matches a pattern? for more about that.
The specific answer you want is:
awk 'f{print;f=0} /regexp/{f=1}' file
or specializing the more general solution of the Nth record after a regexp (idiom "c" below):
awk 'c&&!--c; /regexp/{c=1}' file
The following idioms describe how to select a range of records given a specific regexp to match:
a) Print all records from some regexp:
awk '/regexp/{f=1}f' file
b) Print all records after some regexp:
awk 'f;/regexp/{f=1}' file
c) Print the Nth record after some regexp:
awk 'c&&!--c;/regexp/{c=N}' file
d) Print every record except the Nth record after some regexp:
awk 'c&&!--c{next}/regexp/{c=N}1' file
e) Print the N records after some regexp:
awk 'c&&c--;/regexp/{c=N}' file
f) Print every record except the N records after some regexp:
awk 'c&&c--{next}/regexp/{c=N}1' file
g) Print the N records from some regexp:
awk '/regexp/{c=N}c&&c--' file
I changed the variable name from "f" for "found" to "c" for "count" where
appropriate as that's more expressive of what the variable actually IS.
f is short for found. Its a boolean flag that I'm setting to 1 (true) when I find a string matching the regular expression regexp in the input (/regexp/{f=1}). The other place you see f on its own in each script it's being tested as a condition and when true causes awk to execute its default action of printing the current record. So input records only get output after we see regexp and set f to 1/true.
c && c-- { foo } means "if c is non-zero then decrement it and if it's still non-zero then execute foo" so if c starts at 3 then it'll be decremented to 2 and then foo executed, and on the next input line c is now 2 so it'll be decremented to 1 and then foo executed again, and on the next input line c is now 1 so it'll be decremented to 0 but this time foo will not be executed because 0 is a false condition. We do c && c-- instead of just testing for c-- > 0 so we can't run into a case with a huge input file where c hits zero and continues getting decremented so often it wraps around and becomes positive again.
It's the line after that match that you're interesting in, right? In sed, that could be accomplished like so:
sed -n '/ABC/{n;p}' infile
Alternatively, grep's A option might be what you're looking for.
-A NUM, Print NUM lines of trailing context after matching lines.
For example, given the following input file:
foo
bar
baz
bash
bongo
You could use the following:
$ grep -A 1 "bar" file
bar
baz
$ sed -n '/bar/{n;p}' file
baz
I needed to print ALL lines after the pattern ( ok Ed, REGEX ), so I settled on this one:
sed -n '/pattern/,$p' # prints all lines after ( and including ) the pattern
But since I wanted to print all the lines AFTER ( and exclude the pattern )
sed -n '/pattern/,$p' | tail -n+2 # all lines after first occurrence of pattern
I suppose in your case you can add a head -1 at the end
sed -n '/pattern/,$p' | tail -n+2 | head -1 # prints line after pattern
And I really should include tlwhitec's comment in this answer (since their sed-strict approach is the more elegant than my suggestions):
sed '0,/pattern/d'
The above script deletes every line starting with the first and stopping with (and including) the line that matches the pattern. All lines after that are printed.
awk Version:
awk '/regexp/ { getline; print $0; }' filetosearch
If pattern match, copy next line into the pattern buffer, delete a return, then quit -- side effect is to print.
sed '/pattern/ { N; s/.*\n//; q }; d'
Actually sed -n '/pattern/{n;p}' filename will fail if the pattern match continuous lines:
$ seq 15 |sed -n '/1/{n;p}'
2
11
13
15
The expected answers should be:
2
11
12
13
14
15
My solution is:
$ sed -n -r 'x;/_/{x;p;x};x;/pattern/!s/.*//;/pattern/s/.*/_/;h' filename
For example:
$ seq 15 |sed -n -r 'x;/_/{x;p;x};x;/1/!s/.*//;/1/s/.*/_/;h'
2
11
12
13
14
15
Explains:
x;: at the beginning of each line from input, use x command to exchange the contents in pattern space & hold space.
/_/{x;p;x};: if pattern space, which is the hold space actually, contains _ (this is just a indicator indicating if last line matched the pattern or not), then use x to exchange the actual content of current line to pattern space, use p to print current line, and x to recover this operation.
x: recover the contents in pattern space and hold space.
/pattern/!s/.*//: if current line does NOT match pattern, which means we should NOT print the NEXT following line, then use s/.*// command to delete all contents in pattern space.
/pattern/s/.*/_/: if current line matches pattern, which means we should print the NEXT following line, then we need to set a indicator to tell sed to print NEXT line, so use s/.*/_/ to substitute all contents in pattern space to a _(the second command will use it to judge if last line matched the pattern or not).
h: overwrite the hold space with the contents in pattern space; then, the content in hold space is ^_$ which means current line matches the pattern, or ^$, which means current line does NOT match the pattern.
the fifth step and sixth step can NOT exchange, because after s/.*/_/, the pattern space can NOT match /pattern/, so the s/.*// MUST be executed!
This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed -n ':a;/regexp/{n;h;p;x;ba}' file
Use seds grep-like option -n and if the current line contains the required regexp replace the current line with the next, copy that line to the hold space (HS), print the line, swap the pattern space (PS) for the HS and repeat.
Piping some greps can do it (it runs in POSIX shell and under BusyBox):
cat my-file | grep -A1 my-regexp | grep -v -- '--' | grep -v my-regexp
-v will show non-matching lines
-- is printed by grep to separate each match, so we skip that too
If you just want the next line after a pattern, this sed command will work
sed -n -e '/pattern/{n;p;}'
-n supresses output (quiet mode);
-e denotes a sed command (not required in this case);
/pattern/ is a regex search for lines containing the literal combination of the characters pattern (Use /^pattern$/ for line consisting of only of “pattern”;
n replaces the pattern space with the next line;
p prints;
For example:
seq 10 | sed -n -e '/5/{n;p;}'
Note that the above command will print a single line after every line containing pattern. If you just want the first one use sed -n -e '/pattern/{n;p;q;}'. This is also more efficient as the whole file is not read.
This strictly sed command will print all lines after your pattern.
sed -n '/pattern/,${/pattern/!p;}
Formatted as a sed script this would be:
/pattern/,${
/pattern/!p
}
Here’s a short example:
seq 10 | sed -n '/5/,${/5/!p;}'
/pattern/,$ will select all the lines from pattern to the end of the file.
{} groups the next set of commands (c-like block command)
/pattern/!p; prints lines that doesn’t match pattern. Note that the ; is required in early versions, and some non-GNU, of sed. This turns the instruction into a exclusive range - sed ranges are normally inclusive for both start and end of the range.
To exclude the end of range you could do something like this:
sed -n '/pattern/,/endpattern/{/pattern/!{/endpattern/d;p;}}
/pattern/,/endpattern/{
/pattern/!{
/endpattern/d
p
}
}
/endpattern/d is deleted from the “pattern space” and the script restarts from the top, skipping the p command for that line.
Another pithy example:
seq 10 | sed -n '/5/,/8/{/5/!{/8/d;p}}'
If you have GNU sed you can add the debug switch:
seq 5 | sed -n --debug '/2/,/4/{/2/!{/4/d;p}}'
Output:
SED PROGRAM:
/2/,/4/ {
/2/! {
/4/ d
p
}
}
INPUT: 'STDIN' line 1
PATTERN: 1
COMMAND: /2/,/4/ {
COMMAND: }
END-OF-CYCLE:
INPUT: 'STDIN' line 2
PATTERN: 2
COMMAND: /2/,/4/ {
COMMAND: /2/! {
COMMAND: }
COMMAND: }
END-OF-CYCLE:
INPUT: 'STDIN' line 3
PATTERN: 3
COMMAND: /2/,/4/ {
COMMAND: /2/! {
COMMAND: /4/ d
COMMAND: p
3
COMMAND: }
COMMAND: }
END-OF-CYCLE:
INPUT: 'STDIN' line 4
PATTERN: 4
COMMAND: /2/,/4/ {
COMMAND: /2/! {
COMMAND: /4/ d
END-OF-CYCLE:
INPUT: 'STDIN' line 5
PATTERN: 5
COMMAND: /2/,/4/ {
COMMAND: }
END-OF-CYCLE:
I got .txt file with city names, each in separate line. Some of them are few words with one or multiple spaces or words connected with '-'. I need to create bash command which will echo those lines out. Currently I'm using cat piped with grep but I can't get both spaces and dash into one search and I had problems with checking for multiple spaces.
print lines with dash:
cat file.txt | grep ".*-.*"
print lines with spaces:
cat file.txt | grep ".*\s.*"
tho when I try to do:
cat file.txt | grep ".*\s+.*"
I get nothing.
Thanks for help
Something like that should work:
grep -E -- ' |\-' file.txt
Explanation:
-E: to interpret patterns as extended regular expressions
--: to signify the end of command options
' |\-': the line contains either a space or a dash
This does not directly address your question, but is too much to put in a comment.
You don't need the .* in your patterns. .* at the beginning or end of a pattern is useless, because it means "0 or more of any character" and so will always match.
These lines are all identical:
cat file.txt | grep ".*-.*"
cat file.txt | grep "-.*"
cat file.txt | grep "-"
Plus you don't need to cat and pipe:
grep "-" file.txt
When grep pattern matches, the default action is to print the whole line, so .* in all your patterns are redundant, you may delete them. Also, you don't have to use cat file | as you may specify the file to grep directly after pattern, i.e. grep 'pattern' file.txt.
Here are some more details:
grep ".*-.*" = grep -- "-" - returns any lines having a - char (-- singals the end of options, the next thing is the pattern)
grep ".*\s.*" = grep "\s" - matches and returns lines containing a whitespace char (only GNU grep)
grep ".*\s+.*" = grep "\s+" - returns line containing a whitespace followed with a literal + char (since you are using POSIX BRE regex here the unescaped + matches a literal plus symbol).
You want
grep "[[:space:]-]" file.txt
See the online demo:
#!/bin/bash
s='abc - def
ghi
jkl mno'
grep '[[:space:]-]' <<< "$s"
Output:
abc - def
jkl mno
The [[:space:]-] POSIX BRE and ERE (enabled with -E option) compliant pattern matches either any whitespace (with the [:space:] POSIX character class) or a hyphen.
Note that [\s-] won't work since \s inside a bracket expression is not treated as a regex escape sequence but as a mere \ or s.
I would like grep to print out all complete words that include the match.
Google did not help me. Here what I tried:
cat file.txt
21676 Mm.24685 NM_009346 ENSMUSG00000055320
20349 Mm.134093 NM_011348 ENSMUSG00000063531
12456 Mm.134000 NM_011228 GM415666
grep -o "ENSMUS" file.txt
ENSMUS
ENSMUS
Desired output:
ENSMUSG00000055320
ENSMUSG00000063531
Thanks for your help!
You may use:
grep -wo "ENSMUS[^[:blank:]]*" file.txt
ENSMUSG00000055320
ENSMUSG00000063531
Here [^[:blank:]]* will match 0 or more characters that are not whitespaces. -w will ensure full word matches.
To extract ENSEMBL mouse accession numbers without the version number:
grep -Po 'ENSMUS\w+' in_file
With the version number:
grep -Po 'ENSMUS\S+' in_file
Here,
\w+ : 1 or more word characters ([A-Za-z0-9_]).
\S+ : 1 or more non-whitespace characters (you can also be more restrictive and use [\w.]+, which is 1 or more word character or literal dot).
Here, GNU grep uses the following options:
-P : Use Perl regexes.
-o : Print the matches only (1 match per line), not the entire lines.
SEE ALSO:
grep manual
perlre - Perl regular expressions
Trying to trim the output of a command on terminal. I want to see only strings after blah in a command line output. I tried
<command> | grep -A "blah"
but getting an error output as
grep: illegal option -- A
I am using cut in-conjunction with grep to get strings after a keyword "blah" in this case
echo "random text string blah strings after" | grep -o "blah.*$" | cut -c 5-
grep portion of command extracts whole line after "blah" including "blah" and cut command removes first 4 characters from this string. Only first occurrence of "blah" will be used as delimiter to trim the line.
Given the following file:
this is some words
and this one too<div>
<html></html>
and more words 123
Caps to begin
ASDFSDFSDF
the following 2 commands work as I would expect:
grep -i '[:alpha:]' testfile
gives
this is some words
and this one too<div>
<html></html>
and more words 123
Caps to begin
ASDFSDFSDF
and
grep '[:alpha:]' testfile
gives
this is some words
and this one too<div>
<html></html>
and more words 123
Caps to begin
but
grep '^[:alpha:]' testfile
and this one too<div>
and more words 123
and
grep -i '^[:alpha:]' testfile
and this one too<div>
and more words 123
ASDFSDFSDF
The caret which should ensure the line begins with an alphanumeric has messed everything up. Why is the 'this is some words' line and the 'Caps to begin' line not getting matched?
This is using bash on Mac Lion.
I believe what you're looking for is:
grep '^[[:alpha:]]' testfile
grep -i '^[[:alpha:]]' testfile