Hello there, Anyone can help me to get this working please. I need to extract from a text file to a new text file a portion of code based on a start and end pattern. Start pattern it's always on two lines as this: <li type='disc'><nobr> STARTPATTERN ... and I would like to extract from the first line of this text (<li type....) until a second pattern like this one: <li type='disc'><nobr> ENDPATTERN ...but in this case without taking nothing of these text, jut until the previous line. Yes, I know it's a bit strange, but I've googled for more than an hour and found no app or command line tool able to do this. I will be very grateful if anyone can help me with this. Sweet greets, banshie

Why does this seem so eerily familiar? ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

I had to search "eerily" because my English doesn't go so deep... eerili: def. Inspiring inexplicable fear, dread, or uneasiness; strange and frightening. Well... I really though anyone could help me ... firstly I tried for myself finding a solution, tried to search for a standalone product able to do this and unexpectedly there's no such a program, commercial or not, capable of extract text between two diferent delimiters. I tried first for command line but finally wouldn't have matter if it was gui-based ... but not luck. Then I tried to search for batch programming and almost all interesting and near what i was searching searches guided me to cumputing.net forums. Before posting I tried to search previous posts and related topics, and although there was no solution for my search I could found out a very helpful member community. I get really surprised there wear lots of question answered when everybody knows what happens in this sort of help forums ... lots of uneducated "questioners" and a few "helpers". Sorry if I didn't follow any step, I'm not here for disturbing, I only thought I could get a little help here as I love to do when someone needs my help on something i can share my knowledge. Sweet greets, banshie

Works on myfile; outputs to newfile. ================================= @echo off > newfile & setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion set /a N=0 for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%a in (myfile) do ( set /a N+=1 set curr=%%a if "!curr!" equ "STARTPATTERN" if "!prev!" equ "<li type='disc'><nobr>" ( set /a pre=!N! ) set prev=!curr! ) set /a N=0 for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%a in (myfile) do ( set /a N+=1 set curr=%%a if "!curr!" equ "ENDPATTERN" if "!prev!" equ "<li type='disc'><nobr>" ( set /a post=!N!-1 ) set prev=!curr! ) set /a N=0 for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%a in (myfile) do ( set /a N+=1 set str=%%a if !N! gtr !pre! if !N! lss !post! (echo !str! >> newfile) ) ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Many thanks ... you're my hero ;) I've made a few changes and maybe this way this great script by Mechanix2Go can help more people than only me... this is the new code: Script Purpose: Extract a portion of text between two delimiters from a text file and output it to a new file. Valid for any text file, html included. -------------------------------------------------------------- @echo off > newfile.txt & setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion set /a N=0 set offsetup=0 set offsetdown=0 for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%a in (originalfile.txt) do ( set /a N+=1 set curr=%%a if "!curr!" equ "START_PATTERN" ( set /a pre=!N!-1+!offsetup! ) set prev=!curr! ) set /a N=0 for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%a in (originalfile.txt) do ( set /a N+=1 set curr=%%a if "!curr!" equ "END_PATTERN" ( set /a post=!N!+1+!offsetdown! ) set prev=!curr! ) set /a N=0 for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%a in (originalfile.txt) do ( set /a N+=1 set str=%%a if !N! gtr !pre! if !N! lss !post! (echo !str! >> newfile.txt) -------------------------------------------------------------- You can customize these fields to fix your needs. originalfile.txt: The file with the text to be extracted. newfile.txt: The created file with the extracted lines. START_PATTERN: Pattern FROM which NEXT lines will be extracted. END_PATTERN: Pattern UNTIL which lines BEFORE will be extracted. set offsetup=0 Offset lines at START of extracted text. Zero means the line with START_PATTERN will be included, -1 means previous line and +1 means extract will start from next line. You can give it any value (logical ;). set offsetdown=0 Offset lines at the END of extracted text. Zero means the line with END_PATTERN will be the last included, -1 means until previous line and +1 means extract will end on next line. You can give it any value (logical again;). Well, hope this can help anyone around, credits to Mechanix2Go! Sweet greets to everyone! //banshie