I have a large textfile structured like this:
---
NAME: Some Name
Random
number
of lines with info.
---
NAME: Another Name
Random
number
of lines
with different info.
---
…
When searching for "different", I want to edit everything from "NAME: Another name" to "---" in a new file.
There may be multiple occurences of a search term. I would love to have all of them in one file.
grep different file.txt > edit.txt puts lines containing "different" in a new file.
But I don´t know how to do the same with everything between the two "---".
Is grep the right tool for the job?
grep is the wrong tool for the job. Using GNU awk for multi-char RS and RT:
awk -v RS='(^|\n)---(\n|$)' -v ORS= '/different/{print $0 RT}' file
For example given this input:
$ cat file
---
NAME: Some Name
Random
number
of lines with info.
---
NAME: Another Name
Random
different number ---
of lines
NAME: just part of some random text
with different info.
---
NAME: Yet another Name
Random
number
of lines
with different info.
---
the above command produces the expected output:
$ awk -v RS='(^|\n)---(\n|$)' -v ORS= '/different/{print $0 RT}' file
NAME: Another Name
Random
different number ---
of lines
NAME: just part of some random text
with different info.
---
NAME: Yet another Name
Random
number
of lines
with different info.
---
while the awk command from the OPs answer outputs:
$ awk 'BEGIN { RS = "---" } /different/' file
NAME: Another Name
Random
different number
of lines
NAME: just part of some random text
with different info.
NAME: Yet another Name
Random
number
of lines
with different info.
with the --- from the middle of the second record replaced by a newline and all separator --- lines gone so the NAME:.. line from the middle of the second record cant be distinguished from other records, etc.