Hi,

thanks again for giving me the time to find out what to correct...I now run

Code:

awk '
  $2 != "=" { next }
  $1 == "(SERVICE_NAME" && $3 ~ s { print a }
  $1 !~ /^\(/ { a=$1 }
'  s="pri" tnsnames.ora

...and it matches just fine. How do I make it case insensitive? Can you please explain how it works?

I think the first line skips over the tnsnames.ora until it finds a pattern 'variable ='. So this will give us the left hand side in $1?
The second line searches for the SERVICE_NAME entry, where the value matches s, which is set on the command line to be 'pri'.
You store this in $1 ....but didn't we keep the left hand side there?

... I do not understand the third line at all.