Is there a way through batch scripting to capture/filter specific blocks of text (four lines each) from a text file when the text I am looking for is interspersed throughout the document? SysInternals PSFile utility is able to create a list of files opened remotely on a computer, shown below. My goal is I'd like to filter this down to just entries made by a particular user (say MATTDW) and pipe this to a new text file. There are four lines that pertain to each MATTDW entry as seen here, but the username is the only constant so I'm not sure if Window's FIND.exe, is the tool to do this. Thanks much! [1514208] \PIPE\spoolss User: MATTDW Locks: 0 Access: Read --- Windows XP Professional 3.39 GHz PsFile v1.01 - local and remote network file lister Copyright (C) 2001 Mark Russinovich Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com Files opened remotely on presrvr: [1495506] E:\Students\2012\12345\filename.fla User: 12345 Locks: 3 Access: Read Write [1506409] \PIPE\spoolss User: BETTYB Locks: 0 Access: Read Write [1506410] \PIPE\winreg User: BETTYB Locks: 0 Access: Read Write [1509090] E:\Main\Staff\JANER\Private\FOLDERNAME\filename.doc User: JANER Locks: 0 Access: Read Write [1511096] E:\Main\Staff\JILLP\Private User: JILLP Locks: 0 Access: Read [1511365] E:\Main\Staff\JOEB\Public\Science 8 User: JOEB Locks: 0 Access: Read [1512423] E:\Main\Staff\JOEB\Public\Science 8\Astronomy\Rocketry\filename.xls User: JOEB Locks: 0 Access: Read Write [1512679] E:\Main User: MATTDW Locks: 0 Access: Read [1512853] E:\Main\Staff\BETHC\Private\Documents 05 06\Odyssey User: BETHC Locks: 0 Access: Read [1513379] E:\Students\2012\23456 User: 23456 Locks: 0 Access: Read [1513380] E:\Students\2012\34567 User: 34567 Locks: 0 Access: Read [1513643] E:\Students\2012\45678\filename.pub User: 45678 Locks: 0 Access: Read Write [1513715] E:\Students\2013\56789\filename.ppt User: 56789 Locks: 0 Access: Read [1514082] E:\Main User: BILLYG Locks: 0 Access: Read [1514208] \PIPE\spoolss User: MATTDW Locks: 0 Access: Read -Matt- :-)

If you're open to options other than a batch file, here's a Perl solution. #!perl use strict; use warnings; use Tie::File; tie my @array, 'Tie::File', 'sysfile.txt' or die $!; for my $i ( 0..$#array ) { if ( $array[$i] =~ /User: MATTDW/ ) { print join("\n", @array[$i-1..$i+2]) . "\n"; } }

:: get 4 line blocks to new files @echo off setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion if exist outfile.* del outfile.* for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%a in (matt.txt) do ( echo %%a | find "[" > nul if not errorlevel 1 set /a N+=1 echo %%a >> outfile.!N! ) ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Thanks Mechanix2Go, I'll play around with the findstr command with the /S and /M switches more tomorrow. From there I should be able to delete the unneeded outfile.# files (those not containing a match) and then can use the FOR command to load all MATTDW entries back into one text file. I think this will work. FishMonger, thanks. I haven't had the occasion to play with PERL much but I'm always interested in seeing how other programming languages handle similar types of tasks. In this case I think it'd be best to stick with batch scripting since this will eventually be integrated back in to another batch script I wrote yesterday -- plus, I simply don't know enough about PERL at this point in time (although I'd love to dive into this more in the future) to modify the above to work with the other pieces I am working with. I'm saving the code to look at more closely though -- so thanks for your response! Much appreciated, -Matt- :-)

:: get 4 line blocks to new files :: and get MATTDW blocks into another new file @echo off > MATTDW.txt setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion if exist outfile.* del outfile.* for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%a in (matt.txt) do ( echo %%a | find "[" > nul if not errorlevel 1 set /a N+=1 echo %%a >> outfile.!N! ) for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%m in ('dir/b outfile.*') do ( find "MATTDW" < %%m > nul if not errorlevel 1 type %%m >> MATTDW.txt ) ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Mechanix2Go, Thank you very much! -Matt- :-)

here's one using gawk for windows [code] BEGIN{RS="["}$0 ~ /MATT/{ print "["$0 } [/code] save it as filter.awk and from command line c:> gawk -f filter.awk myfile