An instruction of the form:

pattern1, pattern2 { action }

performs the given action on every line, starting at an occurrence of pattern1 and ending at the next occurrence of pattern2 (inclusive). For example, the instruction

/Jim/, /Linda/ { print $2 }

prints the second field of all lines between an occurrence of Jim and an occurrence of Linda. Using the hobbies file as our data file, the output is:

reading
bridge
role playing
bridge

When awk finds a record matching pattern2, it begins to look for a line matching pattern1 again. Thus, with this instruction:

/reading/, /role/

the output is

Jim     reading          15     100.00
Jim     bridge            4      10.00
Jim     role playing      5      70.00
Katie   reading          10      60.00
John    role playing      8     100.00

awk prints the first range of records from reading to role and then starts looking for reading again.

awk starts performing the instruction's action as soon as there is a record that matches pattern1. awk does not check to make sure that there is a line matching pattern2 in the rest of the file. This means that:

/Lori/, /Jim/ { print $2 }

begins printing at the first record that contains Lori, and keeps going until it reaches the end of the file. No Jim is found.