Use sed to print selected lines within a range

Question

Consider the simplified file

AAA
BBB
CCC1
DDD
EEE
CCC2
DDD
FFF
GGG
CCC3
HHH

I can pick out the range EEE to FFF with

sed -n '/EEE/,/FFF/p'

Suppose though that I want to print any line containing C but only within the matching range. I can pipe the result from sed through grep

sed -n '/EEE/,/FFF/p' | grep 'C'

I could also do the range and match in a little awk script (or perl, python, etc.). But how would I do this using just one invocation of sed?

Pretty much a duplicate of Pattern Search between specific lines and print line numbers if you remove the "line numbers" part. I'm sure there are better candidates out there... — don_crissti
– don_crissti, Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 12:36
@don_crissti looks that way doesn't it. But I couldn't find anything previous before asking. — Chris Davies
– Chris Davies, Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 16:26

choroba · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-29 09:47:16Z

15

Use a block in which you tell sed to only print when it sees C:

sed -n '/EEE/,/FFF/{/C/p}'

answered Sep 29, 2018 at 9:47

choroba

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ctac_ · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-29 09:57:03Z

4

You can try :

sed '/EEE/,/FFF/!d;/C/!d'

answered Sep 29, 2018 at 9:57

ctac_

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2 Answers 2