Search for text between two patterns with multiple lines in between

Question

I have a simple question. I have a file containing:

more random text

*foo*
there
is 
random
text
here
*foo*

foo
even
more
random
text
here
foo
more random text         


        

Answer 1

Since checking for "foo" (using /foo/) is relatively expensive, the following avoids that check and will work with all awks worthy of the name:

awk 'c==2 {next} /foo/{++c;next} c==1' file