Re: [gentoo-user] Grep question

[Steven Lembark <lembark@wrkhors.com>]

Adam Carter wrote:
> I need to select all the lines between string1 and string2 in a file.
> String1 exists on an entire line by itself and string2 will be at the
> start of a line. What's the syntax? I cant use -A as there is a variable
> number of lines.

Perl will handle this easily enough for you.

Assuming you want to print string1 and string2:

    perl -n -e 'print if /string1/ ../string2/';

The '..' notation behaves sort of like a triac
(flip-flop?): it is false until the first test
is true and true until the second passes, at
which point it stays false again.

for example:

$ cat a
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd
foo     <-- /foo/ true here
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
bar     <-- /bar/ true here
fdsa
fdsa
fdsa

$ perl -n -e 'print if /foo/ .. /bar/';
foo
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
asdf
bar


-- 
Steven Lembark                                            85-09 90th St.
Workhorse Computing                                 Woodhaven, NY, 11421
lembark@wrkhors.com                                      +1 888 359 3508