Using sed to remove a block of text

Question

I have a block of text that looks like this:

    
... a bunch of stuff 
    

I\'d like to remov

Answer 1

To remove all the text starting from and including <!-- BOF CLEAN --> and ending at and including <!-- EOF CLEAN -->, use following sed command:

sed -i '/<!-- BOF CLEAN -->/,/<!-- EOF CLEAN -->/d' file_name;

Reference: Delete text or paragraph between two sections using sed

Answer 2

$ cat text 
abc
    <!-- BOF CLEAN -->
... a bunch of stuff
    <!-- EOF CLEAN -->
def
$ sed '/<!-- BOF CLEAN -->/,/<!-- EOF CLEAN -->/d' text 
abc
def

http://www.catonmat.net/blog/sed-one-liners-explained-part-three/

Answer 3

These days I am using the /s modifier to do this. I noticed no one mentioned that. I use markup with is free of spaces too like

{bof-nf} ... a bunch of stuff {eof-nf}

So for example, to remove this block, use

$newcontent = preg_replace("/\{bof-nf\}(.*)\{eof-nf\}\\n/s", "", $newcontent);

To keep the block but remove the tags, use

$newcontent = preg_replace("/\{bof-nf\}.*\\n/", "", $newcontent); $newcontent = preg_replace("/\{eof-nf\}.*\\n/", "", $newcontent);