Processing multiple records

Often, you need to consider multiple lines at a time to make a decision, such as the paragraph mode examples seen earlier. Sometimes, you need to match a particular record and then get records surrounding the matched record. The condX{actionX} shortcut makes it easy to code state machines concisely, which is useful to solve such multiple record use cases. See softwareengineering: FSM examples if you are not familiar with state machines.

The example_files directory has all the files used in the examples.

Processing consecutive records

You might need to define a condition that should satisfy something for one record and something else for the very next record. awk does provide a feature to get next record, but that could get complicated (see the getline section). Instead, you can simply save relevant records in variables/arrays and then create the required conditional expression when you have all the required records available. The default behavior of uninitialized variable to act as 0 in numerical context and empty in string context plays a role too.

# match and print two consecutive records
# the first record should contain 'he' and the second one should contain 'you'
$ awk 'p ~ /he/ && /you/{print p ORS $0} {p=$0}' para.txt
Hi there
How are you

# same filtering as above, but print only the first record
$ awk 'p ~ /he/ && /you/{print p} {p=$0}' para.txt
Hi there

# same filtering as above, but print only the second record
$ awk 'p ~ /he/ && /you/; {p=$0}' para.txt
How are you

Context matching

Sometimes you want not just the matching records, but the records relative to the matches as well. For example, it could be to see the comments at the start of a function block that was matched while searching a program file. Or, it could be to see extended information from a log file while searching for a particular error message.

Consider this sample input file:

$ cat context.txt
blue
    toy
    flower
    sand stone
light blue
    flower
    sky
    water
language
    english
    hindi
    spanish
    tamil
programming language
    python
    kotlin
    ruby

Case 1: Here's an example that emulates the grep --no-group-separator -A<n> functionality. The n && n-- trick used in the example below works like this:

• If initially n=2, then we get
  • 2 && 2 — evaluates to true and n becomes 1
  • 1 && 1 — evaluates to true and n becomes 0
  • 0 && — evaluates to false and n doesn't change
• Note that when conditionals are connected with logical &&, the second expression will not be executed at all if the first one turns out to be false because the overall result will always be false. Same is the case if the first expression evaluates to true with the logical || operator. Such logical operators are also known as short-circuit operators. Thus, in the above case, n-- won't be executed when n is 0 on the left hand side. This prevents n going negative and n && n-- will never become true unless n is assigned again.

# same as: grep --no-group-separator -A1 'blue'
# print the matching line as well as the one that follows it
$ awk '/blue/{n=2} n && n--' context.txt
blue
    toy
light blue
    flower

# overlapping example, n gets re-assigned before reaching 0
$ awk '/toy|flower/{n=2} n && n--{print NR, $0}' context.txt
2     toy
3     flower
4     sand stone
6     flower
7     sky

# doesn't allow overlapping cases to re-assign the counter
$ awk '!n && /toy|flower/{n=2} n && n--{print NR, $0}' context.txt
2     toy
3     flower
6     flower
7     sky

Once you've understood the above examples, the rest of the examples in this section should be easier to comprehend. They are all variations of the logic used above and re-arranged to solve the use case being discussed.

Case 2: Print n records after match. This is similar to previous case, except that the matching record isn't printed.

# print 1 line after the matching line
# for overlapping cases, n gets re-assigned before reaching 0
$ awk 'n && n--; /language/{n=1}' context.txt
    english
    python

# print 2 lines after the matching line
# doesn't allow overlapping cases to re-assign the counter
$ awk '!n && /toy|flower/{n=2; next} n && n--' context.txt
    flower
    sand stone
    sky
    water

Case 3: Here's how to print the nth record after the matching record.

# print only the 2nd line found after the matching line
# the array saves the matching result for each record
# doesn't rely on a counter, thus works for overlapping cases
# same as: awk -v n=2 'a[NR-n]; /toy|flower/{a[NR]=1}'
$ awk -v n=2 'NR in a; /toy|flower/{a[NR+n]}' context.txt
    sand stone
light blue
    water

# print only the 3rd line found after matching line
# n && !--n will be true only when --n yields 0
# overlapping cases won't work as n gets re-assigned before going to 0
$ awk 'n && !--n; /language/{n=3}' context.txt
    spanish
    ruby

Case 4: Print n records before the match. Printing the matching record as well is left as an exercise. Since the file is being read in forward direction, and the problem statement is to print something before the matching record, overlapping situation like the previous examples doesn't occur.

# i>0 is used because NR starts from 1
$ awk -v n=2 '/toy|flower/{for(i=NR-n; i<NR; i++) if(i>0) print a[i]}
              {a[NR]=$0}' context.txt
blue
blue
    toy
    sand stone
light blue

Case 5: Print nth record before the matching record.

# if the count is small enough, you can save them in variables
# this one prints the 2nd line before the matching line
# NR>2 is needed as first 2 records shouldn't be considered for a match
$ awk 'NR>2 && /toy|flower/{print p2} {p2=p1; p1=$0}' context.txt
blue
    sand stone

# else, use an array to save previous records
$ awk -v n=4 'NR>n && /age/{print a[NR-n]} {a[NR]=$0}' context.txt
light blue
    english

Records bounded by distinct markers

This section will cover cases where the input file will always contain the same number of starting and ending patterns, arranged in an alternating fashion. For example, there cannot be two starting patterns appearing without an ending pattern between them and vice versa. Lines of text inside and between such groups are optional.

The sample file shown below will be used to illustrate examples in this section. For simplicity, assume that the starting pattern is marked by start and the ending pattern by end. They have also been given group numbers to make it easier to analyze the output.

$ cat uniform.txt
mango
icecream
--start 1--
1234
6789
**end 1**
how are you
have a nice day
--start 2--
a
b
c
**end 2**
par,far,mar,tar

Case 1: Processing all the groups of records based on the distinct markers, including the records matched by markers themselves. For simplicity, the below command will just print all such records.

$ awk '/start/{f=1} f; /end/{f=0}' uniform.txt
--start 1--
1234
6789
**end 1**
--start 2--
a
b
c
**end 2**

Similar to sed -n '/start/,/end/p' you can also use awk '/start/,/end/' but the state machine format is more suitable for the various cases to follow.

Case 2: Processing all the groups of records but excluding the records matched by markers themselves.

$ awk '/end/{f=0} f{print "*", $0} /start/{f=1}' uniform.txt
* 1234
* 6789
* a
* b
* c

Case 3-4: Processing all the groups of records but excluding one of the markers.

$ awk '/start/{f=1} /end/{f=0} f' uniform.txt
--start 1--
1234
6789
--start 2--
a
b
c

$ awk 'f; /start/{f=1} /end/{f=0}' uniform.txt
1234
6789
**end 1**
a
b
c
**end 2**

The next four cases are obtained by just using !f instead of f from the cases shown above.

Case 5: Processing all input records except the groups of records bound by the markers.

$ awk '/start/{f=1} !f{print $0 "."} /end/{f=0}' uniform.txt
mango.
icecream.
how are you.
have a nice day.
par,far,mar,tar.

Case 6 Processing all input records except the groups of records between the markers.

$ awk '/end/{f=0} !f; /start/{f=1}' uniform.txt
mango
icecream
--start 1--
**end 1**
how are you
have a nice day
--start 2--
**end 2**
par,far,mar,tar

Case 7-8: Similar to case 6, but include only one of the markers.

$ awk '!f; /start/{f=1} /end/{f=0}' uniform.txt
mango
icecream
--start 1--
how are you
have a nice day
--start 2--
par,far,mar,tar

$ awk '/start/{f=1} /end/{f=0} !f' uniform.txt
mango
icecream
**end 1**
how are you
have a nice day
**end 2**
par,far,mar,tar

Specific blocks

Instead of working with all the groups (or blocks) bound by the markers, this section will discuss how to choose blocks based on an additional criteria.

Here's how you can process only the first matching block.

$ awk '/start/{f=1} f; /end/{exit}' uniform.txt
--start 1--
1234
6789
**end 1**

# use other tricks discussed in previous section as needed
$ awk '/end/{exit} f; /start/{f=1}' uniform.txt
1234
6789

Getting last block alone involves lot more work, unless you happen to know how many blocks are present in the input file.

# reverse input linewise, change the order of comparison, reverse again
# might not work if RS has to be something other than newline
$ tac uniform.txt | awk '/end/{f=1} f; /start/{exit}' | tac
--start 2--
a
b
c
**end 2**

# or, save the blocks in a buffer and print the last one alone
$ awk '/start/{f=1; b=$0; next} f{b=b ORS $0} /end/{f=0}
       END{print b}' uniform.txt
--start 2--
a
b
c
**end 2**

Only the nth block.

# can also use: awk -v n=2 '/4/{c++} c==n{print; if(/6/) exit}'
$ seq 30 | awk -v n=2 '/4/{c++} c==n; /6/ && c==n{exit}'
14
15
16

All blocks greater than nth block.

$ seq 30 | awk -v n=1 '/4/{f=1; c++} f && c>n; /6/{f=0}'
14
15
16
24
25
26

Excluding the nth block.

$ seq 30 | awk -v n=2 '/4/{f=1; c++} f && c!=n; /6/{f=0}'
4
5
6
24
25
26

All blocks, only if the records between the markers match an additional condition.

# additional condition here is a record with entire content as '15'
$ seq 30 | awk '/4/{f=1; buf=$0; m=0; next}
                f{buf=buf ORS $0}
                /6/{f=0; if(m) print buf}
                $0=="15"{m=1}'
14
15
16

Broken blocks

Sometimes, you can have markers in random order and mixed in different ways. In such cases, to work with blocks without any other marker present in between them, the buffer approach comes in handy again.

$ cat broken.txt
qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
error 1
hi
error 2
1234
6789
state 1
bye
state 2
error 3
xyz
error 4
abcd
state 3
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

$ awk '/error/{f=1; buf=$0; next}
       f{buf=buf ORS $0}
       /state/{if(f) print buf; f=0}' broken.txt
error 2
1234
6789
state 1
error 4
abcd
state 3

Summary

This chapter covered various examples of working with multiple records. State machines play an important role in deriving solutions for such cases. Knowing various corner cases is also crucial, otherwise a solution that works for one input may fail for others.

Next chapter will discuss use cases where you need to process a file input based on contents of another file.

Exercises

The exercises directory has all the files used in this section.

1) For the input file sample.txt, print lines containing do only if the previous line is empty and the line before that contains you.

$ awk ##### add your solution here
Just do-it
Much ado about nothing

2) For the input file sample.txt, match lines containing do or not case insensitively. Each of these terms occur multiple times in the file. The goal is to print only the second occurrences of these terms (independent of each other).

$ awk ##### add your solution here
No doubt you like it too
Much ado about nothing

3) For the input file sample.txt, print the matching lines containing are or bit as well as n lines around the matching lines. The value for n is passed to the awk command via the -v option.

$ awk -v n=1 ##### add your solution here
Good day
How are you

Today is sunny
Not a bit funny
No doubt you like it too

# note that the first and last line are empty for this case
$ awk -v n=2 ##### add your solution here

Good day
How are you

Just do-it

Today is sunny
Not a bit funny
No doubt you like it too

4) For the input file broken.txt, print all lines between the markers top and bottom. The first awk command shown below doesn't work because it is matching till the end of file as the second marker isn't found. Assume that the input file cannot have two top markers without a bottom marker appearing in between and vice-versa.

$ cat broken.txt
top
3.14
bottom
---
top
1234567890
bottom
top
Hi there
Have a nice day
Good bye

# wrong output
$ awk '/bottom/{f=0} f; /top/{f=1}' broken.txt
3.14
1234567890
Hi there
Have a nice day
Good bye

# expected output
##### add your solution here
3.14
1234567890

5) For the input file concat.txt, extract contents from a line starting with ### until but not including the next such line. The block to be extracted is indicated by the variable n passed via the -v option.

$ cat concat.txt
### addr.txt
How are you
This game is good
Today is sunny
### broken.txt
top
1234567890
bottom
### sample.txt
Just do-it
Believe it
### mixed_fs.txt
pink blue white yellow
car,mat,ball,basket

$ awk -v n=2 ##### add your solution here
### broken.txt
top
1234567890
bottom

$ awk -v n=4 ##### add your solution here
### mixed_fs.txt
pink blue white yellow
car,mat,ball,basket

6) For the input file ruby.md, replace all occurrences of ruby (irrespective of case) with Ruby. But, do not replace any matches between ```ruby and ``` lines (ruby in these markers shouldn't be replaced either). Save the output in out.md.

$ awk ##### add your solution here ruby.md > out.md
$ diff -sq out.md expected.md 
Files out.md and expected.md are identical

7) For the input file lines.txt, delete the line that comes after a whole line containing ---. Assume that such lines won't occur consecutively.

$ cat lines.txt
Go There
come on
go there
---
2 apples and 5 mangoes
come on!
---
2 Apples
COME ON

$ awk ##### add your solution here
Go There
come on
go there
---
come on!
---
COME ON

8) For the input file result.csv, use --- to separate entries with the same name in the first column. Assume that the lines with the same first column value will always be next to each other.

$ awk ##### add your solution here
Amy,maths,89
Amy,physics,75
---
Joe,maths,79
---
John,chemistry,77
John,physics,91
---
Moe,maths,81
---
Ravi,physics,84
Ravi,chemistry,70
---
Yui,maths,92