Question

I have an issue where I want to parse through the output from a file and I want to grab the nth occurrence of text in between two patterns preferably using awk or sed

category
1
s
t
done
category
2
n
d
done
category
3
r
d
done
category
4
t
h
done

Let’s just say for this example I want to grab the third occurrence of text in between category and done, essentially the output would be

category
3
r
d
done

Answer 1

This might work for you (GNU sed):

'sed -n '/category/{:a;N;/done/!ba;x;s/^/x/;/^x\{3\}$/{x;p;q};x}' file

Turn off automatic printing by using the -n option. Gather up lines between category and done. Store a counter in the hold space and when it reaches 3 print the collection in the pattern space and quit.

Or if you prefer awk:

awk  '/^category/,/^done/{if(++m==1)n++;if(n==3)print;if(/^done/)m=0}'  file