Sed Find and Display Text Between Two Strings or Words

Posted on in Categories , , last updated April 17, 2008

Q. How do I find the text between the strings FOO and BAR inclusive using sed command line option?

A. Sed is a stream editor. A stream editor is used to perform basic text transformations on an input stream – a file or input from a pipeline.

To output all the text from file called test.xt’ between ‘FOO’ and ‘BAR’, type the following command at a shell prompt. The -n option suppress automatic printing of pattern space:
$ sed -n '/WORD1/,/WORD2/p' /path/to/file
$ sed -n '/FOO/,/BAR/p' test.txt

You can easily find out all virtual host entries from httpd.conf, type
# sed -n '/<VirtualHost*/,/<\/VirtualHost>/p' /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

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45 comment

  1. This is just what I’ve needed! I’ve been playing with awk these days, trying to do the same. As these are my first steps in text manipulation field, I’d appreciate if you could help me out with problems I’ve encoutered: e.g. I want to print only the substring between two words/strings and not those two words/strings (the command you gave prints WORD1 and WORD2, and I do not want them to be printed at all); I believe it’s possible to do some search&replace after I run the above sed command, but I wonder if it’s possible to be done through only one iteration; secondly, let’s say I have two files with different strings, where each string is in its own line in the file; what I want to do is to append each string of the second file to the first so that I could have a file formatted like this:
    first_file’s_string1, second_file’s_string1
    first_file’s_string2, second_file’s_string2
    …
    I couldn’t find a way to do this no matter what I’ve tried. Can someone help me with this? Would appreciate a lot!

  2. , is a range operator in sed – its very useful. I think it can be used to specify 2 line numbers and it will return all the lines between those 2 lines.

  3. Yes, it is a range operator; if you know line number it is good; but most time you need to select data using dynamic conditions

  4. Hi,
    thanks it’s a good tips !!
    I notice a little mistake in your regular expression :
    “/<VirtualHost*/”
    means <VirtualHost with 0 t or an infinite t

    It will be better :
    “/<VirtualHost.*/”

    see ya

  5. A better option will be use to ‘space’ after VirtualHost string in order to ensure that we get the VirtualHost having some value against it.

    For example:-

    # sed -n ‘/<VirtualHost /,//p’ /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

  6. I arrived here struggling with this one but I’ve just figured it out!

    /WORD1/,/WORD2/{
    /WORD1/d
    /WORD2/d
    p
    }

    hth

  8. hi
    i have a file like this:
    …
    ther: Part II (1974) …. Vito Corleone
    … aka Mario Puzo’s The Godfather: Part II (USA: complete title)
    # Mean Streets (1973) …. Johnny Boy
    # Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) …. Bruce Pearson
    # The Gang That
    …
    I need to delete all between ‘)’ and the ‘#’ (keep the # start of each line as is)
    output:
    …
    ther: Part II (1974)
    # Mean Streets (1973)
    # Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
    # The Gang That
    ….

    how do i do it?

  9. Hi,
    Have been reading your blogs for quite some time now and are very informative.
    On this particular script, I need some advice. Say I have 2 words, Begin and End that I am looking for in a file. For Ex.

    Begin
    line1
    line2
    End

    I am trying to modify your script. I want to delete what lies between these 2 patterns viz. Begin/End but I need to keep the words Begin and End. I end up deleting those as well.

    Any inputs ?

    Thanks

  10. I have a similar problem, I have a long line of text and within this line I have my start and end variable and I need the text between start and end.

    Example:

    t6gd68g d9d8j5%9j30j 0jf087*(&&^*2hd920STARTid8 =e72920 2d9nf9END93nf300j90

    needed output between START and END, resulting in id8 =e72920 2d9nf9

    Any Idea how to do this?

    Cheers.

    1. $ echo ‘t6gd68g d9d8j5%9j30j 0jf087*(&&^*2hd920STARTid8 =e72920 2d9nf9END93nf300j90’ | sed -n ‘s/.*START//;s/END.*//p’
      id8 =e72920 2d9nf9

      1. Life saver! I’ve been trying to figure that out forever.

        Since it helped me, I guess I can add that if you have to grab text between two directories in a path like:

        /directory1/blablablabla/directory2/ and all you want is blablablabla
        Your code is perfect, and all you have to do is change the /’s to something else so that you can use /’s in the text, I used % –such as:

        sed -n ‘s%.*directory1/%%;s%/directory2.*%%p’

        I hope this helps someone else.

  11. Hi there,
    I got some problem.
    I got this html Code:

    1 neue Nachricht

    And need to extract the Text “1 neue Nachricht” – but that thing can change.
    Any way in doing this by sed?

    Thanks

  12. I meant this Code:

    a href=”../messages/index.php” class=”navilink”>1 neue Nachricht

  13. You may find that a web scraper using xpath is more appropriate for extracting data from web pages. Try ScRubyt!

  15. I have scenario where i need to copy all the lines in a logfile between 2 specific time intervals. say 5 PM to 6 PM, as the file is quite huge in size we are unable to open the file. please suggest a work around .

    Thanks
    Rajiv.

  17. Hello,
    What if I have a txt like this:
    Begin
    yyyy
    yyyy
    End
    …….
    Begin
    xxxx
    xxxx
    End

    what if I want to display the text between “begin” and “end” but only for the first sequence, or only for the 2nd or 3rd?
    Thanks a lot.

    1. grep -n 1~3p’ filename…. this prints the output from first line and prints every 3rd line from thereon….. I know dis may not completely fulfill ur need, but let me know if u have found ur need…

  18. Hi,

    I found a similar command. Here the strings at both ends (FOO and BAR) will be ignored.

    sed -e "s/.*FOO//;s/BAR.*//" test.txt
    
For example:


    echo "Test to find string between words FOO-/*+_and_+*/- BAR" | sed -e "s/.*FOO//;s/BAR.*//"
    1. Hi,
       this code is working for me.but the issue is in the text file ,4 the line have no specific pattern as the above sentences. This text file is an output of another shell script.i need to exclude the 4th lin efrom the text file.is there any way to achieve this?
  19. For some reason none of listed example does not working properly when trying to search for ,no matter which command is applied it always show rest of content in file.Could be because second word in search is and that causing problem for some reason.But i managed to make it work by this command:
     sed -n ‘s//&/p’ index.html
     It shows entire line where is located,but that is not problem,since the key was to find out content between and tag.
  20. I have found a problem. I need to extract the text between two strings and replace the characters with some symbol.
    Ex : initially.. ABC ghr fhufhuw XYZ
     Output :ABC !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! XYZ.
     Can you please , help me out.I need to fix this.
  21. Hi,
     I need to modify /etc/filesystems file in IBM AIX ,where i have to search for a existing FS stanza (eg /opt) then after that stanza i had to put my new FS stanza.
    /dev/optlv:
     dev = /dev/optlv
     Vfs – jfs2
     mount = yes
    /new/lv #newly insered line
     dev = /new/lv #newly inserted line
     Vfs = jfs2 #newly inserted line
    /tmp
     dev = /dev/tmplv
     ……………………….
  22. Hi ,
     There are some problems I am facing with linux right now.
    This is what I am doing to generate a cryptographic signature fron bash script….
    step1. I encrypt a text : encrypt(bhavyakailkhurabhavyakailkhura) and get a encrypted string sdfghjklsdfghjklzxcvbnmghjkdfghjkzxcvbnmzxc.
     step2. I copy that string manually from mouse no commands used and append it with a file..
    $ cat textfile.txt…
     user=bhavya
     signature={sdfghjklsdfghjklzxcvbnmghjkdfghjkzxcvbnmzxc}
    step3. Using “sed” on text file I send text between “{” and “}” to another file bhavya.txt
     step4. now when I try to decrypt bhavya.txt it say error in reading file. I checked the text is same as encrypted. When I copy original encrypted text in step 1 and decrypt It works.
    I think the problem is sed command changes spacing between text its not same as copying using mouse. Do you have any idea how we can solve this problem?
    Sorry for clumsy and lengthy explanation.
    Thanks
    1. when using sed try to add some tr commands… eg. sed | tr -d’ ‘ | tr -d’\n’ | tr -d’\t’
      this will delete all spaces, newlines etc that sed might add to your string
      to check the spacing you can try: cat file.txt | od -c (find the delimiter), use sed as regulary (when it fails), cat new_by_sed_created_file.txt | od -c (check the changes)
  23. in the same concept, how can i extract all the substring starting with <ds:include and ending with .xml from a long textual string?
     example input (remember, the input content is in one line):
     10120
    expected output:
     ds:include ds:uri=”$HOME/lookup/lookup_table.xml
     ds:include ds:uri=”$HOME/trans/transform.xml
    Thanks
    Moyente
  26. What if If I search for “Element2.blk”, the lines after the “Element2.blk” line slhoud be deleted. Noting but excluding the Element.blk line?
  27. I need to find lines between two words if third word match.
     eg
     JkMountFile /etc/httpd/conf/test1-uriworkermap.properties
     ServerName test1.com
     JkMountFile /etc/httpd/conf/test2-uriworkermap.properties
     ServerName test2.com
    want to search test1.com and print lines between —
  28. Hi
     Pls let me know how can I fetch the string between the SQL>.
     SQL> SQL> SQL> 0 1343761635 TV Alerts-STB TV Alerts 58 6 3 30| 7 1343761635 TV Alerts-STB TV Alerts 58 6 3 30| 7 1343761635 TV Alerts-STB TV Alerts 58 6 3 30| SQL>
    The output I shold see as 0 1343761635 TV Alerts-STB TV Alerts 58 6 3 30| 7 1343761635 TV Alerts-STB TV Alerts 58 6 3 30| 7 1343761635 TV Alerts-STB TV Alerts 58 6 3 30|
  29. Hi Every Body Here …
     I very Enjoyed With these article and with your comments…
     PLease I want Help From Every Programmer Here…
     My hard Proplem is ….I have Notpad++ V6.2 With all plugins nearlly…
     I use the extension “Copyall links” with Mozilla Browser & i copied many websites links
     for espicial operation — So i now have (32) text files—Every File Have avery big data 12.000 lines_with hosts and pathes like this ((www.*.com/anywords/anywords/….))
    So My Queation is ..((how can i keep the hosts only or the domain only))
     in other words ….((How Can I only copy All Words between {www} And {.com} ))
     Please .i want your powerful experiance for doing this..Either or copy these websites to other file OR Invert selection for deleting other non-selected….But finally I want The function Or string that do this….Iam make search in all net but i didn’t find any help …so Answer me PLEASE…WHO ANSWER ME ..PLEASE give me Amessage TO KNOW THAT Y ANSWER ME AT E-mail
     http://WWW.COM2100@YAHOO.COM
     THANKS FOR YOU ALL
  30. Thanks guys. Its a great blog to get your doubts clear.
    But what if we need the portion from a text based on some keyword.
     For eg. My file is like below,
    ————————————————
     Order=[
     1
     2
     3
     4
     5
     Order=[
     6
     7
     8
     9
     10
     Order=[
     11
     12
     13
     14
     15
     Order=[
     ————————————————
     Now i want the middle portion where i found EO427849242. I tried with sed but it does not give me the desired result.
    I used the command,
     sed -n ‘/Sandy Order/,/Sandy Order/p’ Filename
    and it gives me the all the portion in the file from Start=Sandy Order and end=Sandy Order
    When I use the below command,
     sed -n ‘/Sandy Order/,/Sandy Order/p’ Filename | grep EO427849242
    it only gave me the line
     Order=[
    But what i need is
     —–
     Order=[
     11
     12
     13
     14
     15
     —–
    Can anyone please help me on this. It will be really helpful.
  31. Hi My problem is.
     a test.txt file having following list without quotes:
    “a12312
     a3
     a123
     a12
     a12312
     a12312
     a12
     a12
     a12
     a123
     a123
     a123
     a12312
     a3
     a123
     a12
     a12312
     a12312
     a12
     a12
     a12
     a123
     a1
     a1
     a1
     a1”
    I want a sed query that it prints all lines found in between “a12312” & “a123” matched at the last.
    So desired output should be:
     a12312
     a12
     a12
     a12
     a123
  32. Same Problem how to write in batch file. In windows
     I need get the file content from two particular strings.
     any one please success some examples
  33. I have the following file of format:
     aaa
     1
     2
     3
     bbb
     aaa
     4
     5
     6
     bbb
     aaa
     7
     8
     9
     bbb
     what I want for output is separate file for each occurrence of such that:
     out1.txt contains:
     1
     2
     3
    out2.txt contains:
     4
     5
     6
    out3.txt contains:
     7
     8
     9
    Can anyone please help? Thanks!
    1. Hey,
      Did you get an solution to this, if so please share it with me in my email id please . I am having a same scenario and this would be a very helpful. Thanks.
  34. Hello I want to extract text between from below xml file ..
     I tried all option using sed command but did not worked your help is highly appreciated .. Thank you . here is sample file
     ——-
     FRE 3.0.02015-12-28T13:34:19
    2478 FOX CT
     Kingman
     86409
     AZ
    false
    false
     152849 LoanDeliveryFilePreparer
  35. Good explaination. I have a challenge i have a fie where i have some thing like this . i need to read the file and crate a txt file as below :
     Input file
     Begin search for: aaa.com
     Found Email Entry for aaa.com
     version: 1
     dn: uid=WP.Head,ou=people,o=internet
     PrimaryEmailAddress: bbb.com
     EmailAlias: bbb.com
     EmailAlias: ccc.com
     EmailAlias: ddd.com
     EmailAlias: eeee.com
     AccountState: ACTIVE
     AccountType: PRIMARY
     OwnerAccount: 123456
     Search complete for: aaa.co.n
    Begin search for: gz.com
     Found Email Entry for kan.co
     version: 1
     dn: uid=keenan,ou=people,d,o=internet
     PrimaryEmailAddress: z.co
     AccountState: ACTIVE
     AccountType: SUB
     PrimaryAccountID: don
     Search complete for: kan.co
    Begin search for: cory.co
     Found Email Entry for cor.co
     version: 1
     dn: uid=corey.reddish,ou=people,o=internet
     xtraPrimaryEmailAddress: cory.co
     AccountState: ACTIVE
     AccountType: SUB
     PrimaryAccountID: kkjan
     Search complete for: cory.co
    Output:
     uid |PrimaryEmailAddress |EmailAlias1 |Accountstate | Accounttype |OwnerAccount
     wp |bbb.com |bbb.com,ccc.com,ddd.com,eeee.com | Active | Primary | 123456
     keenan |z.co | | Active | Sub | don
     corey |cory.co | | Active | Sub | kkjan
  36. I tryed the commad abut it is always printing the the file:
     I used sed -n ‘//,//p’ file and sed -n ‘/<link*/,//p’ file .
     I want to extract the links and then i want to use wget for downlaoding the files.
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