For BSD or GNU grep you can use -B num to set how many lines before the match and -A num for the number of lines after the match.
grep
-B num
-A num
grep -B 3 -A 2 foo README.txt
If you want the same number of lines before and after you can use -C num.
-C num
grep -C 3 foo README.txt
This will show 3 lines before and 3 lines after.
Last updated 3 years ago