[9fans] Sam / text search query

["Andrew Simmons" <andrew@mbmnz.co.nz>]

Sorry if this is slightly OT here, but I thought it was the likeliest
place to get an answer. I have a problem I was hoping to use Sam for,
partly so that I have an incentive to get better at using the command
language, but I'm too thick to work out how to do what I want.

I have a large number of files, and for each one I need to print out
all sequences of adjacent lines such that the first line in the
sequence contains "sprintf" and the last line contains "msgprint".
Ideally there should be no other occurences of "sprintf" in the
sequence of lines, but I can live with it if there are. My naïve
attempt to do this resulted in the selection of the sequence of lines
from the first "sprintf" to the final "msgprint". Can some kind soul
point out how to do what I want, or failing that suggest an
alternative tool - I could write a program, but feel it shouldn't be
necessary.

Drifting ever more OT, has anyone had problems running Sam under
Windows 2000? It seems to start happily enough, but then gets angry
and refuses to respond to anything I type in the command window,
before finally locking up under circumstances I have not so far
managed to identify.