Howdy all. I have some scripts that read a text file looking for a keyword, then returning all the text until another keyword and puts it into a new file. Problem is, sed returns the entire last line that contains the 2nd keyword, and I don't want it! Here's an example of the sed script line:

sed -n "/WX: /,/[0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9] TMU/P " 15.txt > test1.txt

and here's what it returns:

1911 TMU WX: 1900 1/15-2300 1/15 PAZA SIGMET INDIA 9 FOR SEVERE HD
TURBULENCE BELOW 100 WI AN AREA 20NM NW BGQ TO 40NM E BGQ TO
50NM E ENA TO 10NM W ENA TO 20NM NW BGQ. FWD: DCC,A11
2000 TMU Rick Bartow (IR) On duty position TMU

The blue line is what I don't want. It is a separate entry that does not apply to the previous entry. I can't use grep, because it only gives me the first line of the entry, and each entry can vary in length, so I can't use a line count. These scripts are on Red Hat Enterprise 3 workstations, and I am not allowed to install anything that isn't already on them, so whatever scripting language is already there is all I can use.

The next entry will always start with the date (4 digit), 4 spaces, then the word TMU. There is no other constant for the next entry. Is there any switch to sed or perhaps another command that will get the text I want but stop on the 2nd keyword, or some other way to strip the last line?

I run the same script line multiple times with different beginning keywords so I can group them together into a single report.

I should also mention that each file I am searching could have multiple entries with the same keyword. sed pulls them all in perfectly, except for the extra line from each entry. Any ideas???

Thanks!!!

thanks for the quick response. I entered this:

since I want to remove the line that starts with the date and TMU stamp. However, it is returning nothing. By the way, the double quotes are because I'm testing this on a Windows PC , and the single quotes don't work here. Once I get something that works, I'll go upstairs and test it on the Linux box. If you think that might cause me a problem, I'll test it upstairs now.

Thanks again!

sed -n -e "/[0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9]    TMU/d" -e "/WX: /,/[0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9]    TMU/p " 15.txt > test1.txt

Well, I tried that on the Linux box, and it stripped out the time entry on the line I did want, so gonna have to try something else. Also, funny thing. The script that worked perfectly on my Windows box (the original I posted) doesn't work on the Linux box. It gives me the entire log with some lines duplicated. The only change I made was changing the double quote to single and specifying the full path to the files. Weird!

try putting '[0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9] TMU [^W][^X][^:]' (no quotes) as the 'SOMETHING' in the delete function of sed.

This worked in my tests.

Basically you eliminate the four digits followed by the 'TMU' unless it follows that up with 'WX:'

[edit]

Well scratch that, "duh" moment for me, doesn't work if you have more than one entry to search for. It will eventually pull in another '1911 TMP WX:' line as the last line to the previous entry.

Is there nothing in the actual last line (with the 'FWD:' in it) that you can key in on to make that the last line of your sed command?

Otherwise I think but have not tested, that you could pipe the output from what I've done above through 'uniq -d'