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Really lazy way to print the first instance of $foo that occurs after $bar

ifconfig | grep ^en1 -A5 | grep inet | head -n 1

May 12, 2012bashoneliners

Explanation

This is just for the sake of an example of finding $foo that occurs after $bar. Substitute ifconfig and the arguments of grep appropriately for your use case.

  • In the output of ifconfig there are several lines with inet. We want to get to the first one that comes after a line starting with en1
  • grep ^en1 -A5 will print the line starting with en1 and the next 5 lines that follow it
  • grep inet will print only the lines matching inet
  • head -n 1 will print only the first line

The value 5 in -A5 is really just a guess that the line we're interested in will be within the next 5 lines, the appropriate number depends on your use case.

Kind of a dumb technique, but it's easy to remember.