Extract text between two characters (multiline input) [duplicate]

Question

If I have the text:

aaaaaaaaa
#some info
other rows
end row#
another info

How could I extract only the text between the characters # obtaining only:

some info
other rows
end row

I was trying with sed in this way:

echo -e "aaaaaaaaa\n#some info\nother rows\nend row#\nanother info" |
sed -n -e '/\#/,/\#/p'

but it gives me also the character #. Is there a way to remove # using sed?

Answer 1

You can use perl:

echo -e "aaaaaaaaa\n#some info\nother rows\nend row#\nanother info" |\
perl -0777 -ne '/#([^#]*)#/ && print $1,"\n"; '

Explanation:

• -0777 slurp the whole file as one line (enables multiline matching)
• /#([^#]*)#/ match non-# characters [^#] between too # and with the brackets add it as first matching group.
• && print $1,"\n" if found, print first matching group and a final newline.

Answer 2

Slight adaption to your sed one liner:

echo -e "aaaaaaaaa\n#some info\nother rows\nend row#\nanother info" |
sed -n '/^#/,/#$/ {s/#//;p;}'

Output:

some info
other rows
end row