grep - return surrounding lines for each hit

Question

I'm using grep in a search that returns significant false-positivies, and it's probably easier for me to identify the good results by inspection, than to write the much more complicated grep expression.

To do that, I need to see more than 1 line for each result.

Can I (How do i) instruct grep to return 1-2 lines above and below each match?

For this, and other such queries, 'man grep' is your friend. — Ina, Sep 17 '13 at 16:20
What have you tried? What is your grep expression? What are you attempting to search for? — Freddie, Sep 17 '13 at 16:20
for some reason "man grep" didn't work properly on my machine, but a better choice of google search terms, did. Feel free to close if appropriate — blueberryfields, Sep 17 '13 at 18:45
@blueberryfields well, you could delete this question. And you could also give an answer providing the solution to your problem — woliveirajr, Sep 17 '13 at 18:56
Duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9081/grep-a-file-but-show-several-surrounding-lines?rq=1, with more info there — Yo Ludke, Sep 18 '14 at 12:29

score 26 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 23 '16 at 21:43

26

If you have GNU grep, then:

grep -A 2 -B 2 or grep -C 2
-A stands for after
-B stands for before
-C stands for context (both before and after)

Source and more options: http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?grep

edited Apr 23 '16 at 21:43

Rany Albeg Wein

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answered Sep 17 '13 at 16:19

ThanksForAllTheFish

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Great! Thanks Andy for adding `-C` – ThanksForAllTheFish Sep 17 '13 at 16:23

grep - return surrounding lines for each hit

1 Answers1