Hi all, I have a log file with fixed patterns as shown below:- START(prg01) (please note prg0x) END(prg01,success) START(prg02) END(prg02,success) .... this goes on with prg03,prg04... I need to extract cases which hav failed... here prg02 has failed. so i need 2 grep for the failures, find out the cases that have failed & then extract the lines () between start & end(only failures). Can somebody help. Thanx in advance sandeep

prg02 also shows success. I will assume that it was suppose to say "fail". Following code will print each group of lines that contains the string "fail". A line beginning with "START" signals the beginning of the next group of lines. sed -e '/^START/!{H;$!d;}' \       -e 'x;/fail/!d;' logfile The string "fail" found anywhere in the group will cause the group to be printed. Let me know if you want that tightened up to look only for "fail" within an END line.

Hello james, thanx 4 the reply. prg02 should have been fail & not success. i am sorry 4 that mistake. I will just rephrase the question again ... more clearly. 1>START(prg01) 2> 3> (please note prg0x) 4> END(prg01,success) 5>START(prg02) 6> 7> 8> 9>END(prg02,fail) 1-9 are line numbers 4 u'r convinience. here, prg02 has failed , so i need to extract lines from 5 to 9.