Finding Paragraphs that Contain a Search String

BlueberryPickles · 07-02-2008, 09:17 AM

Hi everyone,

I have a file that contains a list of descriptions. Here are the first four of them as an example:

<Topic r:id="Stuff/EnglishA">
Stuff here A1
Stuff here A2
Stuff here A3
Stuff here A4
Stuff here A5
</Topic>

<Topic r:id="Stuff/Not_English1">
Stuff here Not1_1
Stuff here Not1_2
Stuff here Not1_3
</Topic>

<Topic r:id="Stuff/EnglishB">
Stuff here B1
Stuff here B2
Stuff here B3
Stuff here B4
</Topic>

<Topic r:id="Stuff/Not_English2">
Stuff here Not2_1
Stuff here Not2_2
</Topic>

What I want to do is to create another file that contains only the descriptions that have a particular topic. For example, I want one file that contains only topics where the first line begins with "<Topic r:id="Stuff/English":

<Topic r:id="Stuff/EnglishA">
Stuff here A1
Stuff here A2
Stuff here A3
Stuff here A4
Stuff here A5
</Topic>

<Topic r:id="Stuff/EnglishB">
Stuff here B1
Stuff here B2
Stuff here B3
Stuff here B4
</Topic>

I have strugled with various sed, awk and perl commands but just haven't got it yet.

Could anyone with a big heart save me please?

pixellany · 07-02-2008, 09:28 AM

Welcome to LQ!!

SED will do this. Take a look at this tutorial:
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html

In particular, look at "Ranges by patterns" and "Multi-line ranges"

For example:
sed -n '/start/,/end/p' filename
prints all lines beginning with one containing "start", through one containing "end"

Please post the code that you are using so we can see where you are.

BlueberryPickles · 07-02-2008, 09:36 AM

You are a guru! A million thanks!