How to find patterns across multiple lines using grep?

Posted by Saobi on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Saobi
Published on 2010-04-21T19:58:39Z Indexed on 2010/04/21 20:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 342

Filed under:

grep

|

regex

|

linux

I want to find files that have "abc" AND "efg" in that order, and those two strings are on different lines in that file. Eg: a file with content:

blah blah..
blah blah..
blah abc blah
blah blah..
blah blah..
blah blah..
blah efg blah blah
blah blah..
blah blah..

Should be matched.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about grep

grep is inconsistently defaulting to grep -P?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have a script that does some housekeeping that works perfectly well when invoked from an interactive shell, but did nothing when invoked by cron. To troubleshoot this I started a shell with a 'blank' environment with the command: env -i /bin/bash --noprofile --norc Using this blank env I've dug… >>> More
grep pattern interpretted differently in 2 different systems with same grep version

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
We manufacture a linux appliance for data centers, and all are running fedora installed from the same kickstart process. There are different hardware versions, some with IDE hard drives and some SCSI, so the filesystems may be at /dev/sdaN or /dev/hdaN. We have a web interface into these appliances… >>> More
grep --exclude/--include syntax (do not grep through certain files)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm looking for the string "foo=" (without quotes) in text files in a directory tree. It's on a common Linux machine, I have bash shell: grep -ircl "foo=" * In the directories are also many binary files which match "foo=". As these results are not relevant and slow down the search, I want grep… >>> More
Grep failing with Emacs (windows), and GnuWin32 Grep

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I've downloaded and installed the GnuWin32 tools, and added the grep executables to the Emacs bin. I've also, for what its worth, added the GnuWin32 bin folder to my Path variable. Problem is though, when I try and run with suggested grep commands, I always get: Grep exited abnormally with… >>> More
How to grep a line start with "*" using grep

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi, How can I use 'grep' to get lines start with '* ' in my file? I tried grep "" myfile I tried grep " " myfile but returns all the lines of my file. Thank you. >>> More

Related posts about regex

Find multiple regex in each line and skip result if one of the regex doesn't match

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a list of variables: variables = ['VariableA', 'VariableB','VariableC'] which I'm going to search for, line by line ifile = open("temp.txt",'r') d = {} match = zeros(len(variables)) for line in ifile: emptyCells=0 for i in range(len(variables)): regex = r'('+variables[i]+r')[:|=|\(](-… >>> More
OWASP Regex Repository: Is this regex correct?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I was looking at the regular expression for validating various data types from the (OWASP Regex Repository). One of the regular expressions in there is called safetext and looks like: ^[a-zA-Z0-9\s.\-]+$ My first question is: Is this regular expression correct? complementary question If this… >>> More
Make a Perl-style regex interpreter behave like a basic or extended regex interpreter

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a tool to help students learn regular expressions. I will probably be writing it in Java. The idea is this: the student types in a regular expression and the tool shows which parts of a text will get matched by the regex. Simple enough. But I want to support several different regex… >>> More
JS regex isn't matching, even thought it works with a regex tester

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm writing a piece of client-side javascript code that takes a function and finds the derivative of it, however, the regex that's supposed to match with the power rule fails to work in the context of the javascript program, even though it sucessfully matches when it's used with an independent regex… >>> More
c# RegEx with "|"

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to be able to check for a pattern with | in them. For example an expression like d*|*t should return true for a string like "dtest|test". I'm no regex hero so I just tried a couple of things, like: Regex Pattern = new Regex("s*\|*d"); //unable to build because of single backslash Regex Pattern… >>> More