hi,

if i have a file and i want to search for the word error using grep, i usually want to see the surrounding lines too as they contain info about the error. what would be a nice way to achieve this?

thanks

Use the -A and -B option of grep.

Regards

oops, I missed those. thanks

Hi,

my grep on HP-UX does not have this -A and -B option

my grep is HP-UX 11i Version 2: August 2003

Is there any other way to achieve what I want to do?

thanks

sometimes you can

sed "s/good data/good data+/"
tr "\n" "~"
tr "+" "\n"
grep for what you need
tr "~" "\n"

Hi.

There are awk and perl solutions in the thread grep and display few lines before and after

I tried them both and they work. The perl solution is far longer, but more general.

An interesting and powerful utility is found at cgrep home page referred to from freshmeat.net: Project details for cgrep but will require some work to configure and compile the c code of the project:
... cheers, drl

thanks all