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removing a block of text with sed

I've got a script that creates multiple instances of a web-application, each with it's own url (e.g host.com/app1, host.com/app2).
What I do now, is create a separate "site" file for apache2 and then enable it (a2ensite under ubuntu). This works, but I eventually end up with a bunch of files in /etc/apache2/sites-available which is ugly.
So the concept is to have a single file for all of the projects with corresponding sections of it being added (no prob) and removed as a web-app gets removed.
Could anyone please share experience on how to make sed search for the pattern like

Code:

<-- web_app_name -->

....

<-- web_app_name -->

and then remove it and everything in-between?
Is it possible with sed at all? (can't imagine the way this could get done)

TIA

Hi,

This deletes in-place, try without the -i option first:
sed -i '/<-- web_app_name -->/,/<-- web_app_name -->/d' infile

Hope this helps.

if you have Python, here's an alternative:
sample input:

Code:

<-- web_app_name -->

test

test

line

esfas

saf

<-- web_app_name -->

sfas

safdlka

ljsafd

kjasfd

<-- web_app_name -->

script:

Code:

data = open("file").readlines()

data = [i.strip() for i in data]

ind = []

for num,item in enumerate(data):

    if "<-- web_app_name -->" in item:

        ind.append(num)

for i in range(len(ind)):

    try:

        print '\n'.join(data[ ind[i]+1: ind[i+1] ])

    except: pass

    else: print

output:

Code:

#./test.py

test

test

line

esfas

saf





sfas

safdlka

ljsafd

kjasfd

druuna, thanks. this worked out perfectly.

ghostdog74, thanks. Python is what's I'm going to start learning really soon.