UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

hi,

i'm trying to get grep to only look for input within the first pair of parenthesis. For example,

(blah blah lookhere) blah blah blah

the above input should return the line if i'm grepping for "lookhere". but the below input should not since "lookhere" is not in the first parenthesis:

(blha blah blah) (lookhere blah blah) lookhere

i'm sure this is pretty simple, but I havn't found a way to print out the correct results. Any ideas?

thanks,
gammaman

try awk:
file contents

Code:

(blah blah lookhere) some stuff
(blah blah ) (blah blah lookhere) some stuff
blah blah look here (some stuff)

output:

Code:

(blah blah lookhere) some stuff

code:

Code:

awk '
  {
    a=index($0,"lookhere")
    if(a>0)
    {
       b=index($0,")")
       if(a<b){ print $0}
    }
  } ' filename

would there be a way to do it just using grep? i'm trying to use it with the grep that's avaliable in perl

thanks

file contents

Code:

(blah blah lookhere) some stuff
(blah blah ) (blah blah lookhere) some stuff
blah blah look here (some stuff)

output:

Code:

(blah blah lookhere) some stuff

Code:

egrep "^[^)]*lookhere.*" file

wouldn't it be more natural to do it natively within perl?