Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi

Currently I can grep a log file with the following command:

$results = `grep -A 2 '^$date.$time.*' $log`;

and the following arguments:

$date = 2007/04/25
$time = 16:07

Log example:

2007/04/25 16:07:12.145701
2007/05/25 14:07:12.145701
2007/05/25 17:07:12.145701
2007/06/25 16:07:12.145701

Therefore running the script ./script 2007/04/25 16:07

will return the 2nd line of the log - 2007/05/25 14:07:12.145701

But how do I do range of dates, by giving a 2 more arguments:

./script 2007/03/20 15:13 2007/08/19 14:31

So therefore returning:

2007/04/25 16:07:12.145701
2007/05/25 14:07:12.145701
2007/05/25 17:07:12.145701

I dont see how I can do that with grep as it is just pattern matching once, do I need a loop which can step through all the days and seconds in between the 2 dates or is there a kind of date range function?

Thanks
Rich

non trivial, grep will not cope

Code:

awk '$0>=from&&$0<=to' from="2007/03/20 15:13" to="2007/08/19 14:31" infile

Use nawk on Solaris.

of course, brilliant

im using, is this compatible:
SuSE Linux 9.3 (i586)
VERSION = 9.3

'$0>=from&&$0<=to' is ensuring that the $0 is in between the from and 2 dates specified.

How can I run this in perl?

Im using:
$results = `awk '$0>=from&&$0<=to' from="$date $time" to="$date2 $time2" $log `;

then "if (!$results) {" to find out if $results contains anything? but is not working

error is:

awk: ./s>=from&&./s<=to
awk: ^ syntax error

yes is working in the shell (command prompt) but not when running as part of perl script?.

How can I incorporate that into my perl script?

Write it in perl (not awk) ...