Shell Programming and Scripting

OK, so for a grand overview of what I'm trying to do:

I've got 2 files that are mostly like.
The file format is:

[descriptor1]
data
data
data
data

[descriptor2]
data
data
data
data

[descriptor3]
data
data

[descriptor4]
data
data

OK, so what I need to do is take all data from [descriptor2] and [descriptor3] sections from file1, remove like sections from file2, and then insert the stream from file1 in the right spot in file2. Fun, right?

Well, I'm new w/ sed, but that seems the best way to do this (correct me if I'm wrong). I've got some code that's working atm, however it's giving me the actual line [descriptor4] as that's the end of the range I'm using and I don't want it to include that in the section delete, how do I not make it do that?

sed '/\[descriptor2/,/\[descriptor4/!d' file1

Basically, I want the output to be:

[descriptor2]
data
data
data
data

[descriptor3]
data
data

And it's giving me all that, plus a [descriptor4] as that's where the range ends, but I'm not sure how else to define it.

Thank you for any light you can shed!

Try this:

Code:

awk ' 
FNR==NR && /descriptor2/{f=1} 
FNR==NR && /descriptor4/{f=0} 
FNR==NR && f{arr[++i]=$0}
FNR==NR{next}
/descriptor2/{for(j=1;j<=i;j++){print arr[j]};f=1} 
/descriptor4/{f=0} 
!f{print}
' "file1" "file2"

Regards

Code:

sed -e '/\[descriptor2/,/\[descriptor4/!d' -e '/\[descriptor4/d' file1