Question

here is the input:

aaa
bbb
ccc
ddd
eee
fff

what I want? do sth like” sed “/ccc/,/(eee)/d” BUT ALSO DELETE “bbb” line (before “ccc”)
so that output is:

aaa
fff

any ideas?

Answer 1

If you are fine with awk, this should do:

$ awk '/ccc/,/eee/{if(i!=1){i=1;x="";}next}{if (x)print x;x=$0;}END{print x}' file
aaa
fff

Every previous line is printed in the above case. Normal range filtering is done using awk. However, within the range filter, the variable x is reset so that the previous record just before the range is not printed.

Update:

sed solution:

$ sed '${x;p;};/ccc/,/eee/{/ccc/{s/.*//;x;};d;};1{h;d;};x;/^$/d;' file