Hi,

I would like to print a block of text between 2 regular expression using Sed,
This can be achieved by using the command as shown below, however my problem is the same block of text is repeated twice. I would like to eliminate the duplicate block of text.

For Example

If my file test.txt contains following data.
**********************************************
start
test for the block
test for the block
test for the block
End
Blah Blah
Blah Blah
Blah Blah
start
test for the block
test for the block
test for the block
end

*******************
Now if i use sed command to print the text between regular expressions
"start" and "end"

sed -n '/start/,/end/p' text.txt >> ouput.txt

I get the block of text twice in output.txt file as shown below
********************************************************************
start
test for the block
test for the block
test for the block
end
start
test for the block
test for the block
test for the block
end
****************

Please help on how do I filter duplicate printing.

Thanks in Advance
Deepak

Make sed quit when it encounters the end.

sed -n '/start/,/end/p;/end/q' text.txt >> output.txt

Hi,

Thanks for your help and time on this, It works great.

Deepak.

I'd like to piggy-back onto this post and ask, how do I read everything in between "start" and "end" so that "start" and "end" are not included in the extraction?

I recognize that I can use different words, but I want to keep "start" and "end" in my file. The reason is that I created a help page for a script I wrote. When option -h is used, it grabs the text from the file. It would be handy to have all my help pages begin with "start" and end with "end". But I don't want those words to display on the screen.

Thanks.

sed -n '/start/,/end/p
 /end/q
 ' filename | sed '/^start$/d
/^end$/d'

Or another idea:

awk '/^start$/ { while (getline && $0 !~ /^end$/) print }' inputfile