Hi, When using two consecutive regexp patterns with a negative offset applied to the first one, the second one doesn't start its input section after the offset. From the invocation [0] page it should: > [...] If it is given, the input up to (but not including) the matching line plus or minus offset is put into the output file, and the line after that begins the next section of input. Here is an example of the problem, where I want to split a file of 50 lines having a number on each line, ranging from 1 to 50. # My environment: - Linux mars 4.17.2-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jun 16 11:08:59 UTC 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux - csplit (GNU coreutils) 8.29 # A failing example with the unexpected behavior $ csplit numbers50.txt /15/-5 /12/ 18 csplit: ‘/12/’: match not found 123 # A working example when using a regexp pattern followed by a linenum pattern $ csplit numbers50.txt /15/-5 12 18 6 117 $ head xx* ==> xx00 <== 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ==> xx01 <== 10 11 ==> xx02 <== 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 I think that both should work and output the same thing. I have found this while trying to port csplit to rust at [1] for some more information, as I have tried to understand the cause of this behavior in the code. Cheers, [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/csplit-invocation.html#csplit-invocation [1] https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/501#issuecomment-399569870 -- Stephane Campinas