Regexp for all text between two lines

Question

I would like match a text like that

my  begin line
not useful text that I cannot match because I don't know how it is composed
my end line

I'd match all the text above, my problem right now is that I cannot match all the text but just the first line with a regext like that:

my begin line\n.*my end line

So I am confused, any help ?

With many regexp implementations you have to provide a modifier to tell it that `.` should match newlines. — Barmar, Mar 04 '13 at 16:34
You can't do it with `grep`, it operates on a line by line basis. — Barmar, Mar 04 '13 at 16:37
[Related](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3717772/regex-grep-for-multi-line-search-needed). — Bernhard Barker, Mar 04 '13 at 16:38
`grep -Pzo '^my begin line\n.*\nmy end line$' your_text_file` — matts, Mar 04 '13 at 16:42

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 04 '13 at 16:57

1

You can do it with sed:

sed -n '/my begin line/,/my end line/p'

answered Mar 04 '13 at 16:57

Barmar

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 04 '13 at 17:11

you mentioned awk in comments:

this gives you all text, (including lines with begin, end pattern)

awk '/my  begin line/,/my end line/' file

this gives you only lines between the begin/end patterns (without lines with begin, end pattern)

awk '/my  begin line/{f=1;next;}/my end line/{f=0}f' file

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 04 '13 at 17:45

1

To print the lines between two patterns, excluding the lines containing the patterns themselves use:

sed -n '/my begin line/,/my end line/ {/my begin line/n;/my end line/!p}' file

answered Mar 04 '13 at 17:45

dogbane

3 Answers3