Question

I have a bat file that I should use to delete a part of one file and save into another one. I need to delete all the symbols between text ‘[aaa bbb]’ and ‘[ccc ddd]’. That is if I have the text:

[aaa bbb] 1 2 3 [ccc ddd] 

I should have as output:

[aaa bbb] [ccc ddd] 

Thank you

EDIT: I would like to clarify the question. I should delete all the symbols between marker1 and marker2. Marker1 and marker2 are just some words or parts of text but not obligatory lines. For example I would have:

[aaa bbb] [ccc] 1 2 3 4 5 [www yyy] 

If I want to delete the text between [aaa bbb] and [www yyy] I should have as output:

[aaa bbb]  [www yyy] 

Answer 1

Take a look at the section ‘Delete between marker 1 and marker2’ on this sed hints page

Applying it on your example. clean.sed:

/^\[aaa bbb\]$/,/^\[ccc ddd\]$/{  /^\[aaa bbb\]$/!{    /^\[ccc ddd\]$/!d  } } 

Run using:

sed -f clean.sed inputfile.txt 

To edit the input file ‘in place’, use the -i option to sed:

sed -i.bak -f clean.sed datafile.txt 

A backup copy of the file with the name ‘datafile.txt.bak’ is saved before editing the original.

EDIT: Since the assumption that the markers where always on a line of their own was wrong, heres a script that can handle markers in the middle of a line:

/\[aaa bbb\]/,/\[ccc ddd\]/{   s/\[aaa bbb\].*/[aaa bbb]/   s/.*\[ccc ddd\]/[ccc ddd]/   /\[aaa bbb\]$/!{     /^\[ccc ddd\]/!d   } } 

For this input:

foo[aaa bbb]1 2 3 4 5[ccc ddd]bar foo [aaa bbb] 1 2 3 [ccc ddd] bar 

It produces:

foo[aaa bbb] [ccc ddd]bar foo [aaa bbb] [ccc ddd] bar 

Note! It can’t handle files where the markers can appear on the same line.

EDIT again: If the input format for marker 1 is such that you can always count on it being on a line of its own you can simplify the script some:

/^\[aaa bbb\]$/,/\[ccc ddd\]/{   s/.*\[ccc ddd\]/[ccc ddd]/   /^\[aaa bbb\]$/!{     /^\[ccc ddd\]/!d   } } 

(Anchoring marker 1 at the beginning and end of a line and skipping the trimming of the marker 1 line.)