AWK: Access captured group from line pattern

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With gawk, you can use the match function to capture parenthesized groups.

gawk 'match($0, pattern, ary) {print ary[1]}'

example:

echo "abcdef" | gawk 'match($0, /b(.*)e/, a) {print a[1]}'

outputs cd.

Note the specific use of gawk which implements the feature in question.

For a portable alternative you can achieve similar results with match() and substr.

example:

echo "abcdef" | awk 'match($0, /b[^e]*/) {print substr($0, RSTART+1, RLENGTH-1)}'

outputs cd.

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