Print everything on line after match

Question

I have an large textfile that contains an unique string in the middle. What i want to do is to print everything AFTER the string by using grep.

cat textfile | grep "target_string"
This highlights target_string but prints the whole file

cat textfile | grep -o "target_string"
This prints only target_string

cat textfile | grep -o "target_string*"
This prints only target_string

How can i print everything after target_string and nothing before?

By "everything", you mean just everything ON THAT LINE, right? It looks like a lot of people interpreted your question to mean THE REST OF THE FILE. — iconoclast, Aug 23 '14 at 02:41
I added an answer to print everything after the string ON THAT LINE, and not the rest of the file — Chris Koknat, Oct 07 '15 at 14:07

score 52 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

52

Strangely, the accepted answer printed out the whole line, where I just wanted all the info after the target string. This worked for me:

sed -n 's/target_string//p' filename

Adapted from this post

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

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answered May 09 '13 at 21:46

chimeric

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This assumes `target_string` is at the beginning of line. You can change the regex to `.*target_string` to fix that. – tripleee Feb 17 '16 at 15:14

score 35 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 18 '11 at 00:56

35

With GNU grep, try -B0 -A999999999 or similar. A better choice might be awk:

awk '/target_string/ {seen = 1}
     seen            {print}'

If (your problem specification is slightly unclear) you don't also need to print the matching line, sed is even shorter:

sed '1,/target_string/d'

answered Mar 18 '11 at 00:56

geekosaur

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The sed line worked perfectly for what I needed, thanks! – dimo414 May 30 '12 at 17:10
You can also use `-C 3` to get the lines around the line - I completely forgot about these options! – Wilf Jun 15 '14 at 08:30
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This is extremely useful info, and exactly what *I'm* looking for, but I'm pretty sure the OP only wanted to match *the rest of the line*. It's not immediately obvious at first glance, but if you read the question carefully I think this shows through. ("Print everything *on line* after match" instead of "Print everything *after matching line*") Of course it's also possible that this clarification (or obfuscation?) was the result of edits made after you answered... – iconoclast Aug 23 '14 at 02:49

score 30 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 18 '11 at 00:59

30

You forgot the '.':

    cat textfile | grep -o "target_string.*"

answered Mar 18 '11 at 00:59

ysdx

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No need for `cat`, you can directly `grep` the file. – speakr Mar 18 '13 at 16:19
The `awk` solution seems substantially more flexible and useful. – Jay Taylor Jul 23 '13 at 19:13
Tip: use in conjunction with `-h` if you need to drop a filename prefix also. (e.g. if doing `find | grep` ) – Luke Usherwood Jan 10 '19 at 08:14
I like this answer but with a small tweak: `cat testfile | grep -o "After and including.*" | grep "highlight"` – CompEng88 Jul 14 '22 at 16:38

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 15 '15 at 00:44

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This will print everything after each match, on that same line only:

perl -lne 'print $1 if /target_string(.*)/' textfile

This will do the same, except it will also print all subsequent lines:

perl -lne 'if ($found){print} else{if (/target_string(.*)/){print $1; $found++}}' textfile

answered Sep 15 '15 at 00:44

Chris Koknat

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I wanted to print the rest of a single line after a pattern. And the first one worked well. None of the other answers helped. This was to remove everything before a particular directory in a path. – subin Oct 07 '15 at 10:31

Print everything on line after match

4 Answers4