I know how to use grep -B n -A m match to print n and m lines before and after a match. I also know how to use sed to print from match1 until match2. But how can I combine these in a one-liner:
> cat file.txt
bar
foo
bar
baz
match1
qux
blah
bleep
match2
boop
blah
Sample Output for n=2:
bar
baz
match1
qux
blah
bleep
match2
Group the commands, that way they share the same input, so when grep quits sed takes over:
{ grep -B2 -m1 match1; sed '/match2/q'; } < infile
Try piping the output of the grep command to the sed command? E.g.,
grep <options> file | sed <options>
sed is a stream editor. so if you want print previous lines that is already gone you need to keep them in buffer for later use. so i first keep two lines in the buffer 1{N;N} and maintained with N;D commands
sed -rn '1{:X N;N};
/match1[^\n]*$/{:Y N; /match2[^\n]*$/{p;n;bX}; bY};
N;D' infile