How to grep a file, but show several surrounding lines?

Query:

I would like to grep for a string, but also show the preceding five lines and the following five lines as well as the matched line. How would I be able to do this?

grep a file, but show several surrounding lines:

For BSD or GNU grep you can use -B num to set how many lines before the match and -A num for the number of lines after the match.

grep -B 3 -A 2 foo README.txt

If you want the same number of lines before and after you can use -C num.

grep -C 3 foo README.txt

This will show 3 lines before and 3 lines after.

In other words,

-A and -B will work, as will -C n (for n lines of context), or just -n (for n lines of context… as long as n is 1 to 9).

I normally use

grep searchstring file -C n # n for number of lines of context up and down

Many of the tools like grep also have really great man files too. I find myself referring to grep’s man page a lot because there is so much you can do with it.

man grep

Many GNU tools also have an info page that may have more useful information in addition to the man page.

info grep

Answer #2:

Print N lines after matching lines

You can use grep with -A n option to print N lines after matching lines.

For example:

$ cat mytext.txt 
  Line1
  Line2
  Line3
  Line4
  Line5
  Line6
  Line7
  Line8
  Line9
  Line10

$ grep -wns Line5 mytext.txt -A 2
5:Line5
6-Line6
7-Line7

Other related options:

Print N lines before matching lines

Using -B n option you can print N lines before matching lines.

$ grep -wns Line5 mytext.txt -B 2
3-Line3
4-Line4
5:Line5

Print N lines before and after matching lines

Using -C n option you can print N lines before and after matching lines.

$ grep -wns Line5 mytext.txt -C 2
3-Line3
4-Line4
5:Line5
6-Line6
7-Line7

How to use grep for two different lines?

To use grep for two different lines, search for both patterns

$ grep -e sweet -e lemon file_type
This is a sweet
lemon.

Or use alternation

$ grep -E 'sweet|lemon' file_type
This is a sweet
lemon.

To get the next line after a pattern, you could use the context option

$ grep -A1 sweet file_type
This is a sweet
lemon.

But if you’re searching explicitly for a multiline pattern, that’s tricky because grep thinks in lines…. Your .* will catch everything between “sweet” and “lemon” on the line. We can get “lemon” on the next line with -P using \n to match the newline and by telling grep the file is null separated with -z:

$ grep -zPo 'This is a sweet\nlemon' file_type
This is a sweet
lemon.

Notes:

• -E Use extended regular expressions (to use | character for alternation without needing to escape it)
• -An Print additional lines after the pattern, where n is the number of trailing lines to print
• -P Use perl-style regular expressions (“experimental” in grep – install pcregrep instead for better perl regex support)
• -z Use the null character as separator (just pretending in this case, but grep will take our word for it)
• -o only print the matched part

Hope you learned something from this post.

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