perl awk OR sed, search between two timestamps

Question

I have a file with following sample text. (The actual text is huge).

2014/05/08-19:15:44.544824-
2014/05/08-19:21:54.544824-
2014/0         


        

Answer 1

Why all the complexity?

$ awk -F'[-.]' '"19:15:00"<=$2 && $2<="19:20:00"' file
2014/05/08-19:15:44.544824-

or less readably but more efficiently if the file is sorted:

$ awk -F'[-.]' '$2>"19:20:00"{exit} $2>="19:15:00"' file
2014/05/08-19:15:44.544824-