get a value from the contents of file

[geffry]

I have file with lot of values.. I need to take out values from a file using shell script

file looks like
===========
start:1 (some unique number)
xyz: (some value..)
abc: (some value..)
end:1
start:2
xyz: (some value..)
abc: (some value..)
end:2
..
start:n
xyz: (some value..)
abc: (some value..)
end:n

================

I want to get value for the field "xyz" from the file along with "start" number.

how do i get the values for the field between the "start" and "end" fields. There are lot of start and end pairs in the file.

any help would be appreciated..

 

[johngiggs]

Geffry,

Something like this should get you started:

# ---- values.awk ----
/^start:/{sval = $2}
/^xyz:/{xyz = $2; print sval, xyz}

To invoke the awk script, execute the command:

awk -f values.awk input_filename

Thanks,

John

 

[feherke]

Hi

For section 2's xyz field :

sed -n '/^start:2/,/^end/{/xyz/p}' filename.txt

Feherke.