How can I delete everything until a pattern and everything after another pattern from a line? In the following file: > Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut eu metus id lectus vestibulum ultrices. Maecenas rhoncus. I want to delete everything before `consectetuer` and everything after `elit`. My desired output: consectetuer adipiscing elit. How can I do this?

I'd use sed


sed 's/^.*\(consectetuer.*elit\).*$/\1/' file


Decoded the sed s/find/replace/ syntax:

* `s/^.*` \-- substitute starting at the beginning of the line (`^`) followed by anything (`.*`) up to...
* `\(` \- start a named block
* `consectetuer.*elit\.` \- match the first word, everything (`.*`) up to the last word (in this case, including the trailing (escaped)dot) you want to match
* `\)` \- end the named block
* match everything else (`.*`) to the end of the line (`$`)
* `/` \- end the substitute find section
* `\1` \- replace with the name block between the `\(` and the `\)` above
* `/` \- end the replace