Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi, I've been searching in this forum for the last 4 hours trying to do one thing: search 2 lines and delete the above line. So far I have not be able to find something similar in this forum, so I need help. This is what I'm trying to do. For example, I have a file called file1:

file1
word1 abc
word2 def delete
word3 ghi
word4 jkl

word1 123
word3 456
word2 do not delete
word4 789
word2 apple delete
word3 pear

I would like to sed/awk for a pattern of 2 consecutive lines (word2 line follow by word3 lines). If found, then delete the above line. So my output file would be:

output
word1 abc
word3 ghi
word4 jkl

word1 123
word3 456
word2 do not delete
word4 789
word3 pear

Thank you so much for you help.

It is simple one.
Here is the code:

Code:

sed '/word2/{
        N
        /word3/D
        }' filename

Let me know if it works.

it works fine. I was trying same but 'D' option didn't came into mind
good work..

N,D,P always work together. Like triplets.

Freelong, Thanks for the quick reply.

I tried your codes in one line: sed '/word2/{N /word3/D }' filename > output, but it didn't work. It says sed: -e expression #1, char 12: Extra characters after command.

So I tried exactly what you typed but redirect the output to an output file. It works. Thanks

Can I do this with just one line in Linux .bashrc?