Grep – Why Asterisk (*) Doesn’t Always Work in Grep

The problem is this line:

for number2 in {1..${loops}}

This is a question of precedence. As explained in man bash:

The order of expansions is: brace expansion; tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, arithmetic expansion, and command substitution (done in a left-to-right fashion); word splitting; and pathname expansion.

So, brace expansion happens before variable expansion. Therefore, when the braces are expanded, $loops has not been evaluated to 5. This means that {1..$loops} (you don't need the second {}) expands to the string {1..5} and not the sequence of numbers from 1 to 5. The same thing happens if you use a string instead of a variable:

$ echo {1..5}  ## works: prints a sequence
1 2 3 4 5
$ echo {1..foo} ## fails: prints a string with no expansion
{1..foo}

As a workaround, you can use seq:

for number2 in $(seq 1 "$loops"); do ...

Or, even better, the right loop for the job:

for((number2=0;number2<=$loops; number2++)); do ...

Note: As a general rule, you should also always quote your variables.

grep doesn't have counter for matches, only -c counter for lines that have the match, but we can use awk to do that. As far as I understand , you want to print the line that matches x number of times based on the amount of matches. Well, here it is:

$ awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) if($i=="banana") counter++;for(j=1;j<=counter;j++) print NR,$0;counter=0 }' input.txt         
1 There is one banana here
2 There are two banana banana here
2 There are two banana banana here
3 There are three banana banana banana here
3 There are three banana banana banana here
3 There are three banana banana banana here
4 Basically there is no limit to how many banana banana banana banana banana banana banana we can have
4 Basically there is no limit to how many banana banana banana banana banana banana banana we can have
4 Basically there is no limit to how many banana banana banana banana banana banana banana we can have
4 Basically there is no limit to how many banana banana banana banana banana banana banana we can have
4 Basically there is no limit to how many banana banana banana banana banana banana banana we can have
4 Basically there is no limit to how many banana banana banana banana banana banana banana we can have
4 Basically there is no limit to how many banana banana banana banana banana banana banana we can have

Basic idea here is that we loop over each word in a line, and count matches. If there's a match we increment counter and then use that counter to print the same line in a loop. Finally counter is reset and process repeats