How to cat or echo everything between two words in a file

Question

How to cat or echo everything between two words in a file ?

eg

df
df
Instance 
d
f
g
end

So I want everything between Instance and end

Thanks

1) are teh delimiter always on the same line ? 2) is there only 1 occurrence per line or could itbe that several are present ? — NeronLeVelu, Apr 24 '14 at 12:40
Adding code tags show that data is in on `column` not one `row` — Jotne, Apr 24 '14 at 12:53

potong · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-24T16:03:34.280

4

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed -n '/^Instance/,/^end/{//d;p}' file

or as Glenn pointed out:

sed -n '/^Instance/,/^end/{//!p}' file

edited Apr 24 '14 at 16:03

answered Apr 24 '14 at 14:47

potong

Jotne · Answer 2 · 2014-04-24T13:01:32.787

2

This should be correct awk

awk '/end/{f=0} f; /Instance/{f=1}' file
d
f
g

PS, data was not in one line. OP was missing code tags, so showed all in one line ...

edited Apr 24 '14 at 13:01

answered Apr 24 '14 at 12:39

Jotne

a5hk · Answer 3 · 2014-04-24T12:26:14.250

1

awk '{match($0,/Instance(.*)end/,a); print a[1]}' input.txt

Output:

 d f g

edited Apr 24 '14 at 12:26

answered Apr 24 '14 at 12:20

a5hk

If there are more than one `end`, `.*` this greedy star will eat everything. But anyway, its wrong approach of you look at corrected data in OPs question. – Jotne Apr 24 '14 at 12:56
1

If there are more then one `end` or `Instance`, then we should know what is the desired behavior, find longest, shortest, nth occurrence – a5hk Apr 24 '14 at 13:29

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 24 '14 at 13:01

0

sed -n '/^Instance/,/^end/{/^Instance/!{/^end/!p}}' file
d
f
g

answered Apr 24 '14 at 13:01

iruvar

4 Answers4