What does sed -n ‘BEGIN,ENDp’ /path/to/file.txt Linux shell command do?

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🐧 What does this Linux command do?

sed -n 'BEGIN,ENDp' /path/to/file.txt

At first glance, it looks simple. But this small command can save a lot of time when working with logs and large text files.

Let’s break it down:

• sed

  — a stream editor for processing text;

• -n

  — disables automatic output of every line;

• BEGIN,END

  — defines the range of lines to process;

• p

  — prints only the selected lines.

Example:

sed -n '100,150p' application.log

This will print only lines from 100 to 150 of the log file.

You can also use text patterns:

sed -n '/ERROR BEGIN/,/ERROR END/p' application.log

This extracts everything between two markers:

ERROR BEGIN
...
ERROR END

A very useful technique when you need to quickly inspect a specific part of a huge log file without opening it in an editor.

For example:

• debugging production issues;
• analyzing application errors;
• investigating server logs;
• checking deployment output.

Small Linux commands are often the tools that make engineers faster.

Do you use

sed

in your daily workflow? 👨‍💻