Hi,

I am new to Unix world. Is there any command which can directly return the second occurance of a particular string in a file? Basically, I want to read the contents of the file from the second occurance of a particualr string. Can be implemented using a loop, but am just wondering if there is a command which can help me do so.

Please let me know.

TIA
Saurabh

You can use awk something like this -

awk '{
          if(index($0, "some string")> 0) {count++}
          if(count>1) { print $0}
        } ' inputfile > outputofsearch

Thanks for your prompt reply. I am not familiar with awk. Is there any alternative method you can think of..

Other than looping or using awk, perl, or python, I have no other idea except an extreme hack like this:

#!/bin/ksh

# total line in file
wc -l inputfile | read filelen dummy

# find the line to start reading on
grep -n 'some string' inputfile | head -n 2 | tail -n 1 | read startline dummy

# subtract start line from total 
length=$(( $filelen - $startline ))

# tail the lines you need.
tail -n $length inputfile

Thanks Jim. This really helps. Let me try it.

Hi.

Command csplit can help:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

# @(#) s1       Demonstrate splitting a file at second occurrence of string.

set -o nounset
echo

debug=":"
debug="echo"

## Use local command version for the commands in this demonstration.

echo "(Versions displayed with local utility \"version\")"
version >/dev/null 2>&1 && version bash csplit

echo

# Remove debris from previous runs.
rm -f xx*

FILE=${1-data1}

echo
echo " Input file:"
cat -n $FILE

echo
echo " Character counts written to files:"
csplit -k -z $FILE /saurabhsinha23/ {1}

echo
echo " Files created by csplit:"
ls xx*

echo
echo " Results from csplit:"
cat xx02

exit 0

% ./s1

(Versions displayed with local utility "version")
GNU bash 2.05b.0
csplit (coreutils) 5.2.1


 Input file:
     1  First line
     2  many lines can be in the zeroth segment
     3  vanilla lines
     4  this line contains "saurabhsinha23"
     5  another line
     6  yet another line
     7  an additional line
     8  second occurrence of "saurabhsinha23"
     9  more lines
    10  many more lines
    11  third occurrence of "saurabhsinha23"
    12  lines continue
    13  fourth occurrence of "saurabhsinha23"
    14  ...
    15  last occurrence of "saurabhsinha23"
    16  last line

 Character counts written to files:
65
85
205

 Files created by csplit:
xx00  xx01  xx02

 Results from csplit:
second occurrence of "saurabhsinha23"
more lines
many more lines
third occurrence of "saurabhsinha23"
lines continue
fourth occurrence of "saurabhsinha23"
...
last occurrence of "saurabhsinha23"
last line