Hi there, if i had a file that looked like this

my_server1
   red
   green
   blue
   yellow
   blue

my_server2 

  blue
  blue
  yellow
  green
  blue

my_server3

  yellow
  yellow
  blue

my_server1
   blue
   blue
my_server2 
  blue
  blue
  blue
my_server3
  blue

grep 'my_server\|blue' file

OK, forgot to mention im running on Solaris, the above command returns nothing at all

grep 'blue' my_server* | awk -F: '$1!=p1{print $1;} {print $2;p1=$1;p2=$2}'

thanks for the reply, it didnt work so i removed the last bit, the awk statement (see below) and even the grep on its own is not returning anything

cat file | grep 'blue' my_server*

I give you 3 options here:

grep -e my_server -e blue file
awk '$0 ~ "my_server|blue"' file
sed '/myserver\|blue/p;d' file

Thankyou very much for taking the effort to give me those three options..I have tried them all with no success though ... I thank you anyway

# grep -e my_server -e blue /opt/my_file
grep: illegal option -- e
Usage: grep -hblcnsviw pattern file . . .

# awk '$0 ~ "my_server|blue"' /opt/my_file
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: bailing out near line 1

# sed '/my_server\|blue/p;d' /opt/my_file
#     <<< no output