What is the command to count lines in a files, but ignore blank lines and commented lines?

I have a file with 4 sections in it, and I want each section to be counted, not including the blank lines and comments... and then totalled at the end.

Here is an example of what I would like my output to look like:

##comment##
line1
line2
line3
line4
line5
line6

6 lines

##comment##
line7
line8
line9
line10
line11
line12
line13
line14
line15
line16
line17

11 lines

##comment##
line18
line19
line20
line21
line22

5 lines

##comment##
line23
line24
line25
line26
line27
line28
line29
line30
line31
line32
line33
line34
line35

13 lines

35 total lines

Thank you in advance, for your help!

to extend that somewhat(untested):

much simpler ! : )

Hi, kthatch.

You did an excellent job of telling us how the output should look.

However, you did not specify how the sections are separated from each other, nor what you consider a comment - a string at the beginning of a line, a string anyplace in a line, etc.

There is a standard utility nl which knows about sections:
There is also csplit, which can split a file into pieces, based on the occurrence of a regular expression.

Many of the solutions offered are probably adaptable to whatever your file format is, but you may get more on-point suggestions if you are more precise ... cheers, drl

I tried each of these suggestions and neither worked.

Results:

#egrep -cv '#|^$' active_servers
this displayed the total but on screen only, not in the file

#awk '!/^#/ && !/^$/{c++}END{print c}' active_servers
same as above

#awk '!/^[ \t]*(#|$)/ {c++; ct++} /#/ && c { printf "%s\n\n\n%s", c, $0; c=0} END { print ct}' active_servers
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: bailing out near line 1

To provide more detail, I have a script that produces the output above (in my original post) to a file - less the totals that I am seeking help with. When I refer to comments, I mean lines that are preceded with ## and the sections are separated with a blank line as a result of this "sed '/this/{x;p;x;}'" in my script.

Thanks again! More suggestions would be welcome!

If you had rather need the output on file, redirect that.