How to extract data from one to another string and save to the output

Question

Want to get specific hour to another and save output. First hour is my start point for example:

Nov 20 13:42:52 host sendmail[14819]: qAKCgpxF014819: Milter: read returned -1: Connection reset by mail.yahoo.com

And my finish point is:

Nov 20 16:22:23 host sendmail[16326]: qAKCgpxF016326: Milter: read returned -1: Connection reset by mail.yahoo.com

I need to save all data from my start point to my finish point into file only.

Answer 1

If the records are sorted by time, you can just

sed -n '/^Nov 20 13:42:52/,/^Nov 20 16:22:23/p' input.log > output.log

Beware, if there are more records with the end time, only the first one will be printed. You can improve it by

sed -n '/start/,/end/{p;d};/end/p'

Answer 2

does this work for you? (didn't test)

awk -F' |:'  'BEGIN{m="Nov";d=20;sh=13;eh=16}$1==m && $2==d && $3>=sh && $3<=eh' file