August 17, 2023

Show lines below and/or above a match with grep

$ grep pattern file.s -A n

will list n lines of trailing context after each match.

$ grep pattern file.s -B n

will list n lines of leading context before each match.

$ grep pattern file.s -C n

will list n lines of leading and trailing context surrounding each match.

Source: $ man grep.

grep is copyleft-licensed and is maintained by Jim Meyering¹. It was first released in 1973.

See also:

• Search multiple files for an expression (e.g. a keyword) with grep
• Open all grepped files in vim

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1. GNU Grep official website.↩︎

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