This post goes over how to delete lines between two patterns with sed:

• Inclusive
• Exclusive

This post was inspired by Sed: Mutli-Line Replacement Between Two Patterns. See related post Sed replace lines between two patterns.

Inclusive

Delete lines between 2 patterns (inclusive):

sed "/$PATTERN1/,/$PATTERN2/d" $FILE

Replace $PATTERN1 with your 1st pattern, $PATTERN2 with your 2nd pattern, and $FILE with your file path.

Example

Given file file.txt:

one
two
three
four
five

Remove lines between two and four (inclusive):

sed '/two/,/four/d' file.txt

Output:

one
five

Write the output to the same file (macOS):

sed -i '' '/two/,/four/d' file.txt

On Linux, remove the '' after -i.

Exclusive

Delete lines between 2 patterns (exclusive):

sed "/$PATTERN1/,/$PATTERN2/{/$PATTERN1/n;/$PATTERN2/!d;}" $FILE

Replace $PATTERN1 with your 1st pattern, $PATTERN2 with your 2nd pattern, and $FILE with your file path.

Example

Given file file.txt:

one
two
three
four
five

Remove lines between two and four (exclusive):

sed '/two/,/four/{/two/n;/four/!d;}' file.txt

Output:

one
two
four
five

Write the output to the same file (macOS):

sed -i '' '/two/,/four/{/two/n;/four/!d;}' file.txt

On Linux, remove the '' after -i.