You can use something like this: grep --with-filename -A 3 error $FILES | grep -C 3 description If that's not elegant enough for you, there are even tools l

You can use something like this: grep --with-filename -A 3 error $FILES | grep -C 3 description If that's not elegant enough for you, there are even tools like pcregrep that can do multiline matches. Don't uglify the code because of easily solved tool problems.