display range of lines from a file

[Anand_30]

I have 2 variables m and n that contains some value. I want to use them in the following command:

awk 'NR==$n, NR==$m {print $0}' file.out

to print the lines of file.out whose numbers are stored in the variables m & n.

Can anyone please help me in this. Is there any other ways to display a range of lines from a file. The line numbers should be obtianed from the variables that holds them.

Thanks,
Andy

[curt larson_1 · Accepted solution]

awk 'NR >= '$n'&& NR <= '$m' { print $0;}' file.out

[curt larson_1]

awk -v start=$n -v end=$m '{
if ( NR >= start && NR <= end ) print $0;
}' file.out

[curt larson_1]

awk '
NR > '$n' {exit;}
NR >='$m' {print $0;}' file.out

[curt larson_1]

sed -n "$n,$m p" file.out

[curt larson_1]

ex -s +"$n,$m p|q" file.out

there is a few different ways to do it

[Anand_30]

Thanks all

[curt larson_1]

please assign points for helpful responses
http://66.34.90.71/ITRCForumsEtiquette/

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

Though not the best sulution, this should work too, as long as $m is the larger of the two variables:
head -$m file.out | tail -`expr $m - $n`

The problem with your line is that the shell will not replace $n and $m, because it is enclosed in single quotes, which is needed because of the $0 you use for the print. But you since you want to print the entire line, you can do it also using double qoutes.

Another thing is the way you try to do the range. Do you know beforehand which is the bigger one? If not, a better awk version would be:

awk "BEGIN { if ($n > $m) { start=$m;end=$n} else {start=$n;end=$m}}
NR >= start && NR <= end { print}" file.out

[john korterman]

Hi,
my guess is that you want to grep for a string in a file and have some lines before and after the string displayed. If that is the case, try the attached script, which needs three parameters: $1= the string to grep for, $2= the number of lines to print before and after the string, $3= the file.


regards,
John K.

[Jakes Louw]

How about :
`cat -n file.out | egrep "$n|$m"`