UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

hi,

I have looked at many grep threads and am unable to find something like this: please help.
I have a file which is generated from a report generator and i am trying to load a whole lot of specific data into a table for the users. One field is causing me problems.All the rest i can manage.
I want to grep lines with date: (grep "date:" filename)..
however i want those dates only where there is a TEST in the 7th line below it and before the next pattern(date

date: 01/01/2001
xx
yy
zz
aa
bb
cc
TEST
zz
date: 01/02/2001
xx
yy
zz
aa
bb
cc
NOTEST
xx
date: 01/03/2001
xx
yy
zz
aa
bb
cc
NOTEST
yy
date: 01/04/2001
xx
yy
zz
aa
bb
cc
TEST
aa


so the result will be :
date: 01/01/2001
date: 01/04/2001

Any help pl...

thanks

here is my script... this gives me all the dates offcourse:
I remove the last few lines and look for date and cleanse based on the data and write it with the filename,
rm 45days_dates.txt
for file in `ls *.txt`
do
sed -e :a -e '$d;N;2,22ba' -e 'P;D' $file | grep "Date:" | sed 's/\\par//g' | sed 's/Date://g'| sed '/^$/d' | awk '{print $1}' > dummy.dat
while IFS=" " read line
do
print "$file" "$line" >> 45days_dates.txt
done < dummy.dat
rm dummy.dat
done

Code:

awk '/^date/ { _ = $0; n = NR }
/^TEST/ && NR == n + 7 { print _ }
' infile

YOU CAN USE THIS SCRIPT FOR YOUR filename

Thank you radoulov and rahul for your response.

I tried your script radoulov and it works just perfect.. onlt thing is i dont have he date as the first field so i removed the ^ in the pattern.

thank you so much!

Note: rahul i will try your script as well.. thanks

Also i could understand the code. hope i am right.

Look for pattern date. define an array and store the whole row in it.
n=NR - record number
If pattern is TEST and NR=7 print the array.

It's even simpler (the code does not use array(s)):
- if the current input record matches the pattern date - save the entire record $0 in the variable _ and save its number NR in the variable n.
- if the current input record matches the pattern TEST and its number is equal to n + 7 (7 records after the previous one), print the previously saved record _.