your fond memories are of the VMS command search/window=n i also needed something similar on solaris recently and resorted to a simple perl script. i also considered awk. hopefully Jared won't laugh at my admitted rusty perl skills. the code below finds a line containing "string" in /path/file and will print that line and the one following to stdout. granted it could easily be more re-usable and window lines on both sides of "string" like the old VMS command did, but i was in a hurry and had a very specific application for this... <snip> #!/bin/perl -w use strict; my $log_file = '/path/file'; my $printnext = 'no'; open(LOG, "<$log_file") or die "Couldn't open file $log_file: $!"; while (<LOG>) { if ( $printnext eq "yes" ) { print("$_\n"); } $printnext = 'no'; if ( /string/ ) { print("$_\n"); $printnext = 'yes'; } } close(LOG) or die "Couldn't close file $log_file: $!"; </snip> -----Original Message----- From: Vergara, Michael (TEM) [mailto:mvergara@xxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 12:43 PM To: Oracle-L (E-mail) Subject: OT: HP-UX 11/grep Hi Gang...sorry about being kinda OT...but... A long time ago, when I used VMS, I could scan a file and see a set number of lines before and after the line I was looking=20 for. I don't even remember the command nowadays. Does anyone know of an analogous command that can be used in the *NIX environment? Thanks, Mike --- =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= Michael P. Vergara Oracle DBA Guidant Corporation ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------