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I am trying to write a script that searches my server in many .app files and outputs the contents between two strings-- only outputting what occurs between the two strings. I am able to do this with AWK and GREP however, the terms I need to search have escape characters so this is not working.

Here is the .dat file excerpt:

   <List Variable name="lookups">
    <Value>
        <Value name="lookups" value="LSM_OPT"/>
        <OTHER GARBAGE... >             
        <Value name="lookup_name" value="123_Done"/>
        <OTHER GARBAGE... >
        <Value name="lookup_name" value="XYZ_DONE"/>
        <OTHER GARBAGE... >         
  </Variable>
  <List Variable name="lookups_for_data">
      <Value>
        <Value name="lookups" value="LSM_OPT"/>
  </Variable>

I need to find all the data between "List Variable name="lookups"' and "/Variable" and nothing else... part of the problem are the escape characters but also, there are other entries in the .dat files that I do not want to capture but they contain my original search value plus some additional data ... e.g. from above " List Variable name="lookups_for_data"".. I do not want these.

I have tried several awk and sed options but I think the problem is the escape characters. Any help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks for your help!!

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From the sound of it you merely want to find all the content in files that occurs between these two marker strings:

<List Variable name="lookups">
   ...
   ...
</Variable>

To do this you could use this sed command:

$ sed '/<List Variable name="lookups">/,/<\/Variable>/!d;//d' file.dat
    <Value>
        <Value name="lookups" value="LSM_OPT"/>
        <OTHER GARBAGE... >
        <Value name="lookup_name" value="123_Done"/>
        <OTHER GARBAGE... >
        <Value name="lookup_name" value="XYZ_DONE"/>
        <OTHER GARBAGE... >

This prints all the lines in between, but omits the 2 marker lines.

How it works

The above looks for a line that matches your starting pattern, <List Variable name="lookups"> followed by all the lines until it encounters the 2nd matching line, <\/Variable>. For lines in between these, sed will not delete them, !d. For all other lines, the d in !d will delete them. The 2nd //d deletes the marker lines.

If you'd like to do the above, and also print the marker lines, you can change the above sed command to this:

$ sed '/<List Variable name="lookups">/,/<\/Variable>/!d' file.dat
   <List Variable name="lookups">
    <Value>
        <Value name="lookups" value="LSM_OPT"/>
        <OTHER GARBAGE... >
        <Value name="lookup_name" value="123_Done"/>
        <OTHER GARBAGE... >
        <Value name="lookup_name" value="XYZ_DONE"/>
        <OTHER GARBAGE... >
  </Variable>
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