Display certain range of lines in a file

I'm working on a script to reduce the work needed to find a certain qmail log entry and display it in full, but I've hit a sticking point. After I've grep'd out all the relevant log entries to a temp file I want to be able to paginate them with line numbers, but I'm wondering if there's a better way to show lines X through Y in a file.

I say a 'better' way because at the moment the only way I can think of is to calculate the position of X and Y relative to the start or end of the file an then head | tail the file, but the logic gets a bit sticky depending on finnicky little things like 0 or 1 based indexes. I know there should be a simple way with sed or awk, but it escapes me.

TIA

awk sounds like a good idea if you know the indicies:Where X and Y represent the lines 'from' and 'to' in the file.

Wow, thanks for the quick response!

I wish I had thought of that sooner since I should be able to use what you're given me to do nearly everything in one awk program.

Thanks again.