I've learnt how to grep
lines before and after the match and to grep
the last match but I haven't discovered how to grep
the last match and the lines underneath it.
The scenario is a server log.
I want to list a dynamic output from a command. The command is likely to be used several times in one server log. So I imagine the match would be the command and somehow grep
can use -A
with some other flag or variation of a tail command, to complete the outcome I'm seeking.
The approach I would take it to reverse the problem as it's easier to find the first match and print the context lines. Take the file:
$ cat file
foo
1
2
foo
3
4
foo
5
6
Say we want the last match of foo
and the following to lines
we could just reverse the file with tac
, find the first match and n
lines above using -Bn
and stop using -m1
. Then simple re-reverse the output with tac:
$ tac file | grep foo -B2 -m1 | tac
foo
5
6
Tools like tac
and rev
can make problems that seem difficult much easier.
using awk instead:
awk '/pattern/{m=$0;l=NR}l+1==NR{n=$0}END{print m;print n}' foo.log
small test, find the last line matching /8/
and the next line of it:
kent$ seq 20|awk '/8/{m=$0;l=NR}l+1==NR{n=$0}END{print m;print n}'
18
19