grep, etc

[Brian K. White]

Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 01:17:23AM -0400, Brian K. White wrote:
>> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>>> On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 11:08:11PM -0400, Brian K. White wrote:
>>>> Fairlight wrote:
>>>>> Sweet.  I should grab that.  :)  Basically a -useful- egrep.  :)
>>>>> Well, egrep is useful, but not as useful as it otherwise could be.
>>>>
>>>> I'd say the plain old stock sco grep was useful, since it aswered
>>>> the need very directly in one command without especially exotic
>>>> options or a pipeline. Didn't even require the stock egrep let
>>>> alone gnu grep or pcregrep.
>>>
>>> Well, except that it *didn't* fulfill the requirement of the poster
>>> who started this thread, without a big ungainly pipline wrapped
>>> around it.
>>
>> What are you talking about?
>>
>> The stated request was:
>>
>> sample data:
>> ISA*00000089** *
>> CLM*inv123456*a*b*c         -213
>> SV1*23456*25*A*B            -214
>>
>> I want to be able to view a range of lines, ie: from -213 to -216
>>
>> In what way does this fail to meet that request?
>> grep '-21[3-6]$' file
>
> Well, in the *exact* instance he used as an example, it would work.
>
> But what happens if he wants -213 through -226?
>
> There isn't actually, quite enough information about his requirements
> here to design a solution that's guaranteed to work.

head-smack
you are right of course.
Bob, "I lose!"

My next choice would have been awk by using * as the field delimiter, sub*()
to pluck out the 216, and if() the variable is within the limits print $0. 3
or 4 lines minimum, 5 I think if I can't find 216 by some better means than
counting back from the end of the field.

I beleive it's possible with grep but the expression will be ugly as hell
and less understandable than the awk script and way way way less easy to
modify for other search values.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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