Question

I am trying to extract the text between that has specific text file:

----
data1
data1
data1
extractme
----
data2
data2
data2
----
data3
data3
extractme
----

and then dump it to text file so that

----
data1
data1
data1
extractme
---
data3
data3
extractme
---

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

This works well enough for me. Your sample data is in a file called “data.txt” and the output goes to “result.txt”

inFile = open("data.txt")
outFile = open("result.txt", "w")
buffer = []
keepCurrentSet = True
for line in inFile:
    buffer.append(line)
    if line.startswith("----"):
        #---- starts a new data set
        if keepCurrentSet:
            outFile.write("".join(buffer))
        #now reset our state
        keepCurrentSet = False
        buffer = []
    elif line.startswith("extractme"):
        keepCurrentSet = True
inFile.close()
outFile.close()