Hi,

I am facing difficulties in selecting the contents between two delimiters when there is a new line occurs..

Eg:

>more sample.txt
abcd -- this is the first line %
efgh-- this is the 
second line and not 
able to print %
ijkl -- this is the 3rd line %

grep -w efgh sample.txt | awk -F"-" '{print $2}' | awk -F"||" '{print $1}'

code

 nawk  '1' ORS="  "  file.txt | nawk '{print $4}' FS="--|%"

This is fine.. but i want it generalised. I mean i should be able to give input text to it..

---------- Post updated at 05:10 AM ---------- Previous update was at 05:08 AM ----------

#sed -n '/efgh/,/%/{s/efgh-- //;s/%//;p;}' sample.txt

sed -n '/abcd/,/%/{s/efgh-- //;s/%//;p;}' sample.txt
abcd -- this is the first line
this is the
second line and not
able to print
[KRYPTON]/appltgb/test/repc/balaji >

code

nawk  '1' ORS="  "  input_file | nawk '{print $2,$4,$6}' OFS="\n"  FS="--|%" > output_file

more input_file:-

abcd -- this is the first line %
efgh-- this is the 
second line and not 
able to print %
ijkl -- this is the 3rd line %

more output_file:-

this is the first line
this is the  second line and not  able to print
this is the 3rd line

well this is good. But when i change the input file ,,i mean if i insert two more lines..it will not work..pls suggest a code that will help me even if i change the input file. the objecive is to give a input file , a word to search in it. once the word found then print the contents corresponding to the word from '--' to '%' and stop.
Am i clear . ?

Why don't you try something for yourself with all the the solutions given to you?

This is not a helpdesk service, we're not here to do your work for you.

try:

#  sed -n '/efgh/,/%/{s/efgh-- //;s/%//;p;}' sample.txt
this is the
second line and not
able to print