Search for text between two patterns with multiple lines in between

Question

I have a simple question. I have a file containing:

more random text

*foo*
there
is 
random
text
here
*foo*

foo
even
more
random
text
here
foo
more random text         


        

Answer 1

$ awk '/foo/{++c;next} c==1' file
there
is
random
text
here

$ awk '/foo/{++c;next} c==3' file
even
more
random
text
here

or with GNU awk for multi-char RS you COULD do:

$ awk -v RS='(^|\n)[^\n]*foo[^\n]*(\n|$)' 'NR==2' file
there
is
random
text
here

$ awk -v RS='(^|\n)[^\n]*foo[^\n]*(\n|$)' 'NR==4' file
even
more
random
text
here

See https://stackoverflow.com/a/17914105/1745001 for other ways of printing after a condition is true.