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I'm completing a command line game/challenge that involves solving a murder mystery.

One of the steps is to search for a suspect by using grep to search for multiple keywords in one file.

However that file contains thousands of lines of text that has the following format:

License Plate: L337ZR9 Make: Honda Color: Red Owner: Katie Park Height: 6'2"

I have tried using grep in the following ways:

cat vehicles | grep -i 'L337' | grep -i 'honda' ls | grep -i 'honda\|blue\|L337'

But as i understand it these commands will give me any result that matches any one of my three search terms.

What command do i need to search the vehicle file and display matches only match for Blue Honda with license plate of L337 - in other words what command allows grep to find and display results of multiple matching search terms?

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Use GNU grep.

Example

Source

License Plate: L337ZR9 Make: Honda Color: Blue Owner: Katie Park Height: 6'2" License Plate: L338ZR9 Make: Honda Color: Black Owner: James Park Height: 6'0"

Command

grep -Pzo '\w+:\s*L337ZR9\n\w+:\s+Honda\n\w+:\s*Blue' file

Result

Plate: L337ZR9 Make: Honda Color: Blue

Explanation

From grep man:

 -z, --null-data Treat the input as a set of lines,

NOTE: grep (GNU grep) 2.20 tested

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First realize that you are grepping records, not lines.

So merge the 5 line records into a single line:

cat licenseplates | paste - - - - -

Now it is suddenly easy to grep:

cat licenseplates | paste - - - - - | grep -i 'L337' | grep -i 'honda' | grep -i blue

Finally you need to fold the matching lines back into 5 line records:

cat licenseplates | paste - - - - - | grep -i 'L337' | grep -i 'honda' | grep -i blue | sed 's/\t/\n/g'
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