Shell Programming and Scripting

We have very large transaction logs that have transactions which start with a line that starts with 'Begin :' and ends with a line that starts with 'End :'. For most transactions there is valid data between those two lines.

I am trying to get rid of lines that look like this:

Begin : Transaction Id 1245 04-Oct-2011 04:01:48 Username smith
End : Transaction Id 1245 04-Oct-2011 04:01:49

So, get rid of the first line, then get rid of the very next line if that next line starts with 'End :'. If there is data between, I want to preserve those lines throughout the entire file.

Thank you !

Try:

Code:

perl -lp0e 's/^Begin.*\nEnd.*\n//mg' file

Didn't test it.

Using awk

Code:

awk '/^End :/ && A { A=""; next }
  A { print A ; A="" }
  /^Begin :/ { A=$0 ; next }
  1' infile

Both of these gave me syntax errors.

Perl: Substitution replacement not terminated at -e line 1.
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: bailing out near line 1

use nawk (instead of awk) if on Solaris.

nawk ran but did not change the file ...

Is the format exactly as you posted in your exampe ie "Begin :" with a capital B and space between n and colon?