Using awk or sed how can I select lines which are occurring between two different marker patterns? There may be multiple sections marked with these
Using sed:
sed -n -e '/^abc$/,/^mno$/{ /^abc$/d; /^mno$/d; p; }'
The -n option means do not print by default.
The pattern looks for lines containing just abc to just mno, and then executes the actions in the { ... }. The first action deletes the abc line; the second the mno line; and the p prints the remaining lines. You can relax the regexes as required. Any lines outside the range of abc..mno are simply not printed.