grep a file but show several surrounding lines

Question

I would like to grep for a string  but also show the preceding five lines and the following five lines as well as the matched line  How would I be able to do this

User · Answer

You can use option -A  after  and -B  before  in your grep command try grep -nri -A 5 -B 5

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Search for  17655  in   some file txt  showing 10 lines context before and after  using Awk   output preceded with line number followed by a colon  Use this on Solaris when  grep  does not support the  - ACB   options   awk     17655            for  i    b   1    10  i    b  i    i   1    10                    print before i                    print  NR       0           a   10    a--  gt  0           print  NR       0                before b     NR       0           b    b   1    10     some file txt

User · Answer

ack works with similar arguments as grep  and accepts -C  But it s usually better for searching through code

User · Answer

grep thestring thefile -5   -5 gets you 5 lines above and below the match  thestring  is equivalent to -C 5 or -A 5 -B 5

User · Answer

I normally use grep searchstring file -C n   n for number of lines of context up and down  Many of the tools like grep also have really great man files too  I find myself referring to grep s man page a lot because there is so much you can do with it  man grep  Many GNU tools also have an info page that may have more useful information in addition to the man page  info grep

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Here is the  Ygor solution in awk  awk  c-- gt 0  0 s if b for c b 1 c gt 1 c-- print r  NR-c 1  b  print c a b r NR b   0   b 3 a 3 s  pattern  myfile   Note  Replace a and b variables with number of lines before and after   It s especially useful for system which doesn t support grep s -A  -B and -C parameters

User · Answer

grep astring myfile -A 5 -B 5   That will grep  myfile  for  astring   and show 5 lines before and after each match

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Grep has an option called Context Line Control  you can use the --context in that  simply     grep -C 5   or    grep -5   Should do the trick

User · Answer

If you search code often  AG the silver searcher is much more efficient  ie faster  than grep   You show context lines by using -C option   Eg   ag -C 3  foo  myFile  line 1 line 2 line 3 line that has  foo  line 5 line 6 line 7

User · Answer

For BSD or GNU grep you can use -B num to set how many lines before the match and -A num for the number of lines after the match   grep -B 3 -A 2 foo README txt   If you want the same number of lines before and after you can use -C num   grep -C 3 foo README txt   This will show 3 lines before and 3 lines after

User · Answer

I use to do the compact way  grep -5 string file   That is the equivalent of   grep -A 5 -B 5 string file

User · Answer

ripgrep  If you care about the performance  use ripgrep which has similar syntax to grep  e g   rg -C5  pattern         -C  --context NUM - Show NUM lines before and after each match    There are also parameters such as -A --after-context and -B --before-context   The tool is built on top of Rust s regex engine which makes it very efficient on the large data

User · Answer

Use grep     grep --help   grep -i context Context control    -B  --before-context NUM  print NUM lines of leading context   -A  --after-context NUM   print NUM lines of trailing context   -C  --context NUM         print NUM lines of output context   -NUM                      same as --context NUM

User · Answer

-A and -B will work  as will -C n  for n lines of context   or just -n  for n lines of context    as long as n is 1 to 9

[search] grep a file, but show several surrounding lines?

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