Hi All,

I'm working on a large file and need to extract all data between 2 strings. I have seen many good solutions to threads almost like my problem but none that quite fit.
This is all very new to me so any ideas would be really appreciated! (attempted to read sed and awk tutorials but got a headache trying to take it all in!)

Sample of data...

DEF on
DEF off
ABC on
DEF on
DEF off
GHI on
DEF on
ABC off
ABC on
ABC off
DEF off
etc..etc

There are duplications of the main strings I need to include in the output file, so I need to capture the first instance 'ABC on' and the last instance of 'ABC off'.
I need to extract all the data to resemble the output below..

ABC on (first occurence)
DEF on
DEF off
GHI on
DEF on
ABC off
ABC on
ABC off (last occurence)

Thanks In Advance.
Soots

One way to give you the desired output:

Regards

Thanks for the response...for some reason I get the following error messages:

awk: syntax error near line1
awk: bailing out near line 1

I've check the syntax of your script on my machine, it is as per your posting. Any thoughts appreciated.

Regards

Soots

Use nawk or /usr/xpg4/bin/awk on Solaris.

Regards

Did as suggested, used /usr/xpg4/bin/awk. Error messages went away but output did not materialise. The strings I'm using as begin and end placeholders are within a .dat file called machinelog.dat that looks similar to this

6/1/09 23:22:00 Machine1 Initialising : Initialising
6/1/09 23:22:01 Machine1 DEF on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:04 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:05 Machine1 DEF on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:06 Machine1 ABC off : system off
6/1/09 23:22:07 Machine1 DEF off : system off
6/1/09 23:22:22 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:25 Machine1 ABC off : system off
6/1/09 23:22:38 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:23:07 Machine1 DEF on : system on
6/1/09 23:23:09 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:23:15 Machine1 DEF on : system on
6/1/09 23:23:16 Machine1 ABC off : system failure
6/1/09 23:23:18 Machine1 DEF off : system off
6/1/09 23:23:22 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:23:25 Machine1 ABC off : system failure
6/1/09 23:23:38 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:24:07 Machine1 DEF on : system on

and I was hoping to capture everything between the first ABC on and the last system failure and put it into a new file called machinelogmain.dat, like below:

6/1/09 23:22:04 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:05 Machine1 DEF on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:06 Machine1 ABC off : system off
6/1/09 23:22:07 Machine1 DEF off : system off
6/1/09 23:23:22 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:23:25 Machine1 ABC off : system off
6/1/09 23:23:38 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:07 Machine1 DEF on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:00 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:01 Machine1 DEF on : system on
6/1/09 23:22:04 Machine1 ABC off : system failure
6/1/09 23:22:07 Machine1 DEF off : system off
6/1/09 23:23:22 Machine1 ABC on : system on
6/1/09 23:23:25 Machine1 ABC off : system failure

I tried to substitute the ABC on/ABC off etc but not much joy! Does your script format still apply or will it require a change?

Thanks for your patience.

Regards soots

Try this

Regards