Sed One-Liners Explained, Part I: File Spacing, Numbering and Text Conversion and Substitution

You're viewing a comment by Erik and its responses.

Erik Permalink
July 29, 2009, 17:15

This is one that was driving me crazy - couldn't find it anywhere on the net:

DELETE ALL LINES BETWEEN TWO MARKER PATTERNS (but not the markers themselves):

e.g. in a hosts file

== /etc/hosts ==

192.168.1.2 host1
192.168.1.3 host2

### START ###
#delete
192.168.1.4 host3 #delete
192.168.1.5 host4 #delete
#delete
### END ###

192.168.1.6 host5

=============================

The money:

sed -i -e '1,/^### START ###/!{ /^### END ###/,/^### START ###/!d; }' /etc/hosts

I have no idea how it works, but it does. Now your markers are preserved for you to insert other stuff with your funky automation scripts.

Reply to this comment

Comment Responses

Anirudh Permalink
February 02, 2016, 11:32 
sed -i -e '/^### START ###/,/^### END ###/{//!d;}'
Reply to this comment

Reply To This Comment

(why do I need your e-mail?)

(Your twitter handle, if you have one.)

Comment Help

Type the word "lcd_95": (just to make sure you're a human)

Please preview the comment before submitting to make sure it's OK.