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Say I have a file containing:

⟫ cat schema.rb create_table "things", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.string "other_column" # ... t.datetime "created_at" end create_table "users", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.citext "email" # ... t.datetime "created_at", precision: 0 end

and I want to find all lines matching created_at but not matching precision:. That's easy enough:

⟫ grep created_at schema.rb t.datetime "created_at" t.datetime "created_at", precision: 0 ⟫ grep created_at schema.rb | grep -v precision: t.datetime "created_at"

but what if I want to get some context lines for the matched lines so I can see which create_table block they occurred in? Adding a -C/-B flag to the final grep -v is too late because the first grep already dropped all context lines.

⟫ grep created_at schema.rb | grep -v precision: -B3 t.datetime "created_at"

But adding it to the first grep is too early because the grep -v only removes its matched line, not the context lines around its matched lines:

⟫ grep created_at -B3 schema.rb | grep -v precision: -B3 create_table "things", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.string "other_column" # ... t.datetime "created_at" -- create_table "users", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.citext "email" # ...

Is there any way to get it to only include the context lines for the matched lines from the first grep (or equivalently, get the grep -v to remove the context lines around its matched lines)?

 create_table "things", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.string "other_column" # ... t.datetime "created_at"

Or is there another command that would do this for me?

(a simple sed script perhaps—if it requires anything more than a simple sed script, I may as well write it in ruby so that it's easier to read and maintain).

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  • If you want blank-line separated records matching / not matching the two strings you could just use awk in paragraph mode e.g. awk -vRS= '/created_at/ && !/precision/' schema.rb Commented Aug 15, 2018 at 17:21
  • Interesting idea, thanks! Yes, that does look like it would work in this case since the create_table sections are all separated by a blank line. Commented Aug 15, 2018 at 17:28

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I don't think what I was trying to do is possible if I chain together 2 grep commands (since the context lines are relative to each individual grep command).

It occurred to me that a negative lookahead might be what I want. Then it could all be done with a single grep command.

To my surprise, it looks like GNU grep actually does have support for regex lookbehind/lookahead — but only if you use the --perl-regex option.

Here's a grep command that gives me what I was looking for:

⟫ grep --perl-regexp 'created_at(?!(.*precision:))' schema.rb -B3 create_table "things", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.string "other_column" # ... t.datetime "created_at"
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awk solution

$ awk '/create_table/,/created_at/&&!/precision:/' schema.rb create_table "things", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.string "other_column" # ... t.datetime "created_at" create_table "users", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.citext "email" # ... t.datetime "created_at", precision: 0 end $

None of these below achieve exactly what you're after, but I'll throw them in, in case useful in some way.

sed solution that prints the create_table line and the match

Look for create_table line, if found, store in holding buffer 'h'. Look for created_at followed by precision, if found, ignore it. Look for created_at alone, if found, print it.

$ sed -n '/create_table/h;/created_at.*precision:/d;/created_at/{H;g;p}' schema.rb create_table "things", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.datetime "created_at" $

awk solution that prints the create_table line and the match

If you specifically wanted the create_table line against the match, you could use

$ awk '/create_table/{t=$0}/created_at/&&!/precision:/{print t"\n"$0}' schema.rb create_table "things", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.datetime "created_at" $

awk solution that prints the table

Taking it a little further, if you wanted just the table names which had a matching line within, you could use

$ awk '/create_table/{t=$2}/created_at/&&!/precision:/{print substr(t,2,length(t)-3)}' schema.rb things $
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Wouldn't simply reversing the two greps do what you want, eliminating the precision lines upfront so they won't match the created_at lines in the second grep?

grep -v precision schema.rb | grep -A1 -B3 created_at create_table "things", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t| t.string "other_column" # ... t.datetime "created_at" end
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