Extract one word after a specific word on the same line

With awk:

awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) if ($i=="--pe_cnt") print $(i+1)}' inputFile

Basically loop over each word of the line. When you find the first you are looking for, grab the next word and print it.

With grep:

grep -oP "(?<=--pe_cnt )[^ ]+" inputFile

linux bash csh

You can use sed. Just make a group of want you want to match and replace the whole line with the group:

sed -n 's/^.*pe_cnt\s\+\([0-9]\+\).*$/\1/p' file

linux bash csh

If there is a single-space character between --pe_cnt and 100, you may be able to use lookahead and lookbehind assertions

grep -oP '(?<=--pe_cnt\s)\d+(?=\s+--rd_cnt)'

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