removing string between two words in unix

Question

Trying to remove the text between two strings (/* and */) in a txt file without deleting full lines.

Lets say I have a file containing the following:

/* reports */
%report1([email protected] /*[email protected] */,lag=3);
%report2([email protected] /*[email protected]
[email protected] */ ,lag=3);

My desired output would be

%report1([email protected], lag=3);
%report2([email protected]
,lag=3);

I have tried many combinations of tr, sed, and awk, but still not working. Any Thoughts? Notice that report 2 is on two different lines with the delimiters /* and */ also on separate lines.

Would you like the last lag=3to be behind %report2?

Jotne
– Jotne

2014-11-06 07:00:41 +00:00
Commented Nov 6, 2014 at 7:00 — Jotne
– Jotne, Commented Nov 6, 2014 at 7:00

Gilles Quénot · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-05 22:27:17Z

1

With perl :

perl -0777pe 's@/\*.*?\*/@@gs' file.txt

answered Nov 5, 2014 at 22:27

Gilles Quénot

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2 Comments

Micah Smith Over a year ago

@sputnick so ugly but yet so beautiful!

Robin Hsu Over a year ago

Strangely, it does not preserve the original line break (end of line) as requested by the question, in my test.

kdhp · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-05 23:35:34Z

0

awk 'BEGIN { RS="/"; ORS="" }\
     /^\*/,/\*$/ { f=1; next }\
     { if (f!=0) f=0; else print "/"; print }' file.txt

Explanation

BEGIN { RS="/"; ORS="" } set the record separator to "/", and the output record separator to an empty string.

/^\*/,/\*$/ { f=1; next } skip any records between one that starts with *, and one that ends with *, while setting flag f to 1.

{ if (f!=0) f=0; else print "/"; print } if flag f is set then unset it, otherwise print /, and always print the record.

This does not handle the case of /* or */ occurring in a string.

answered Nov 5, 2014 at 23:35

kdhp

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Comments

Ed Morton · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-06 01:39:11Z

0

GNU awk for multi-char RS:

$ awk -v RS='/[*]|[*]/' -v ORS= 'NR%2' file


%report1([email protected] ,lag=3);

%report2([email protected]  ,lag=3);

answered Nov 6, 2014 at 1:39

Ed Morton

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