Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!rosevax!scooter!dan
From: dan@scooter.rosemount.com (Dan Messinger)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Need script to pluck lines of text from a file
Keywords: AWK,script,lines,need advice
Message-ID: <8962@rosevax.Rosemount.COM>
Date: 5 Jul 90 13:12:08 GMT
References: <1990Jun30.180958.28569@cbnewsd.att.com> <8957@rosevax.Rosemount.COM>
Sender: news@rosevax.Rosemount.COM
Reply-To: dan@scooter.rosemount.com (Dan Messinger)
Organization: Rosemount Industrial
Lines: 49

In article <8957@rosevax.Rosemount.COM>, dan@scooter.rosemount.com (Dan
Messinger) writes:
|> In article <1990Jun30.180958.28569@cbnewsd.att.com>,
|> jfb200@cbnewsd.att.com (joseph.f.baugher) writes:
|> |> 
|> |> I am looking for a Shell script capable of doing the following job:
|> |> 
|> |> I have a file consisting of several dozen lines of text, as per example:
|> |> 
|> |> 		text in line 1
|> |> 		text in line 2
|> |> 		....
|> |> 		text in line n
|> |> 		startmarker
|> |> 		text in line n+1
|> |> 		text in line n+2
|> |> 		....
|> |> 	        ...
|> |> 		text in line n+m-1
|> |> 		endmarker
|> |> 		text in line n+m+1
|> |> 		text in line n+m+2
|> |> 		....
|> |> 	        ....
|> |> where startmarker and endmarker are lines of text with characteristic
|> |> markers in them which identify them as unique and different from
the others.
|> |> I want to be able to pipe the lines of text BETWEEN startmarker and
|> |> endmarker to another command for further processing.  Unfortunately,
|> I do not
|> |> know ahead of time what the numbers n and m are.
|> |> 
|> 
|> Sounds like a job for sed.
|> 
|> sed -n "/^startmarker/,/^endmarker/p"

I was informed of a problem with this sed command, in that it also prints the
start and end markers.  So I will try again.  sed doesn't support an offset
on an address pattern, but ex does.  I think this will do the trick.

ex - "+/^startmark/+1,/^endmark/-1 p|q" file

It is slightly limited in that the source text must be in a file, and not
piped into ex.  But the output can be piped to another command as Joseph
specified.

Dan Messinger
dan@scooter.rosemount.com