Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a regexp that I wish to match against every line of a file using awk.

But I do not want to substitute it or select the line.

I want to pull the matched text out and put it in a different file, line by line.

What is the correct awk usage to *extract* a regexp and put it in another file?

cat file.text

A regular expression
can be used as a pattern
by enclosing it in slashes.
Then the regular expression

awk '/expression/ { print $0 }' file.text

A regular expression
Then the regular expression

You goal:

awk '/expression/ { print $0 }' file.text > file.text2
cat file.text2


A regular expression
Then the regular expression

Or even forget awk and use grep:

Code:

$ grep expression inputfile > outputfile

The grep script pulls out all the *lines* with the matching expression.

I just want to pull out the subset of the text that matches the expression.

If the expression were /and/ and the line was "Here and now", I just want to pull out the "and" and put it on a line in the new file.

File01 has "Here and now" and File02 has "and" after the program runs.

Sorry for the bother.

echo "Here and now" | awk '/and/ { print $2 }' > new.file

To assume to know that the /and/ is on the second column!

Unfortunately, I don't know that the "and" is in the second column. That's the problem.

A simple solution:

cat file
Here and now

cat file | sed 's/ /\n/g' | grep "and" > output_file.text