bash script- text file manip- delete everything before/after string

justin99 · 12-02-2007, 04:49 PM

I need a bash script to eliminate junk from the beginning and end of a text file.

can i search a file for 'good stuff begins', deleting each line until that string, then again, deleting each line after 'good stuff ends'

or- perhaps it is possible to copy everything from 'good stuff begins' to 'good stuff ends' to a new file?

tia

gilead · 12-02-2007, 05:00 PM

You can use sed to do that. There's a tutorial at http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html which you might find useful. The following example removes comments (lines that start with #) between the 2 lines containing 'start' and 'stop':

Code:

sed '/start/,/stop/ s/#.*//'

justin99 · 12-02-2007, 07:48 PM

thanks for the help- i'm very close now, but still no cigar.

sed '1,/<START>/ d' temp.html > temp1.html

this works great, removing everything from line 1 until <START>

but i'm stuck on removing everything after <END>

justin99 · 12-02-2007, 07:57 PM

turns out the ! is what i needed

this deletes everything but the selected region

sed '/<START>/,/<END>/ !d' temp.html > temp1.html

why did i waste my time googling- shoulda come here first (- ;

thanks again!

gilead · 12-02-2007, 09:21 PM

I'm glad you got it working. Thanks for posting the code you ended up using too...

skkuizu · 05-15-2009, 02:41 PM

My problem however that I want to remove/delete all character before the START variable and also all character following the END variable.

However START and END are not on the beginning of a line they are in the middle and furthermore in the same line similar to that example:

t6gd68g d9d8j5%9j30j 0jf087*(&&^*2hd920STARTid8 =e72920 2d9nf9END93nf300j90

How to I get the output between START and END, resulting in id8 =e72920 2d9nf9 for this example. I can't find anything on the net so far.

Happy for every idea.

Cheers.

forrestt · 05-15-2009, 02:51 PM

If you just have one line (or a variable you want on every line) then:

Code:

sed -e 's/.*START//' -e 's/END.*//'

HTH

Forrest

skkuizu · 05-15-2009, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by forrestt

If you just have one line (or a variable you want on every line) then:

Code:

sed -e 's/.*START//' -e 's/END.*//'

HTH

Forrest

Forrest, that's great it works! It's so easy that I can't believe it, I should have come straight to this forum, instead I was wasting my time with google for 24h

Many thanks again!!!

ghostdog74 · 05-15-2009, 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skkuizu

instead I was wasting my time with google for 24h

Many thanks again!!!

instead of searching for the exact solution, what you really need to do is to search for a tutorial on shell scripting and read up on the basics.