If you want to print lines from a file that match any of the EREs stored one per line in a file named ERES, but stop using an ERE after it has matched 3 (or whatever value you assign to the maxp variable) lines, you could try:

Code:

/usr/xpg4/bin/awk -v maxp=3 '
FNR == NR {
	eres[$0]
	neres++
	next
}
{	for(ere in eres)
		if($0 ~ ere) {
			#printf("L%d matched %s: %s\n", FNR, ere, $0)
			p = 1
			if(++eres[ere] == maxp) {
				neres--
				delete eres[ere]
				#printf("%s maxed out: left: %d\n", ere, neres)
			}
		}
}
p {	print
	p = 0
}
!neres {exit
}' ERES file.txt

If the file ERES contains:

Code:

abc
bcd
cde

and file.txt contains the sample data you provided in post #4, the above code produces the output:

Code:

abc1
bcd1
abc2
abc3
bcd2
bcd3
cde1
cde2
cde3

Note that if an input line is matched by more than one of your EREs, that line will only be printed once but each matching ERE's match count will be incremented. And, the output will be in the order of the input text file; i.e., output will not be grouped by matching ERE as in your sample output in post #4. Note also that this code will stop reading file.txt as soon as all given EREs have been matched maxp times; with large input files the could save a lot of I/O.

Note that you can still use alternation in your EREs, but the limit on the number of times an ERE will be matched still applies. If the ERES file just contains your original ERE:

Code:

abc|bcd|cde

the output produced would just be:

Code:

abc1
bcd1
abc2