Read only specific lines from text file and save matches into variables

Question

I've got this problem.

I need to extract some words from text file, which I find by specific pattern in that text. For example:

/this/is/path:
file1.txt,date-3
file2.txt,date-2
/this/is/path2:
file.txt,date-1
file2.txt,date-5

The pattern would be the /path: and to choose only lines after that and before another /path:. Because there might be the same names of files. And I need to find exact file.txt and take those 3 things:

• file
• date
• number of launch

into 3 variables.

Example: I have text document in format:

/home/name/Documents:
file.txt,12.5.2014-1
file2.txt,15.8.2014-2
/home/name/Music:
file.txt,15.4.2014-2
f2ile3.txt,8.2.2015-5
file2.txt,7.6.2014-3
/home/name/Video:
file.txt,date-5

and there is directory music and documents which have same files and I want to chose from music only, file.txt. But when it will look for file.txt it will also find one in directory Documents so I only want to choose ones between directory music and it will end in directory Video. And when it finds the file.txt it will save it like this: 1.variable=file.txt, 2.variable=15.4.2014,3.variable=2.

Answer 1

Using Awk:

awk -F'[,-]' '
  /Music/ {f=1} 
  /^$/ {f=0} f && /file\.txt/ \
  {printf "%s\n%s\n%s\n", "var1="$1,"var2="$2,"var3="$3}
  ' file
var1=file.txt
var2=15.4.2014
var3=2

...assuming that there are, in fact, empty lines between your blocks (as per the first example).