in reply to Print a previous to previous of a matching line
Anonymous Monk's suggestion is the right one, just a bit elliptic. Let's phrase this another way:
- You're going through the file a line at a time.
- If you see a line you might want (a "Query" line), you save it in a variable and keep reading lines.
- If you see a "hits" line that matches your criterion, the line you saved was one you want. Print it or stick it in an array for later, or...
- If you see a "hits" line and it doesn't match your criterion, then you don't want the "Query" you saw previously. Throw it away by setting the variable to "".
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