excluding first and last lines from sed /START/,/END/

This should do the trick:

sed -e '/=sec1=/,/=sec2=/ { /=sec1=/b; /=sec2=/b; s/^/#/ }' < input

This matches between sec1 and sec2 inclusively and then just skips the first and last line with the b command. This leaves the desired lines between sec1 and sec2 (exclusive), and the s command adds the comment sign.

Unfortunately, you do need to repeat the regexps for matching the delimiters. As far as I know there's no better way to do this. At least you can keep the regexps clean, even though they're used twice.

This is adapted from the SED FAQ: How do I address all the lines between RE1 and RE2, excluding the lines themselves?

If you're not interested in lines outside of the range, but just want the non-inclusive variant of the Iowa/Montana example from the question (which is what brought me here), you can write the "except for the first and last matching lines" clause easily enough with a second sed:

sed -n '/PATTERN1/,/PATTERN2/p' < input | sed '1d;$d'

Personally, I find this slightly clearer (albeit slower on large files) than the equivalent

sed -n '1,/PATTERN1/d;/PATTERN2/q;p' < input

Another way would be

sed '/begin/,/end/ {
       /begin/n
       /end/ !p
     }'

/begin/n -> skip over the line that has the "begin" pattern
/end/ !p -> print all lines that don't have the "end" pattern

Taken from Bruce Barnett's sed tutorial http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html#toc-uh-35a

I've used:

sed '/begin/,/end/{/begin\|end/!p}'

This will search all the lines between the patterns, then print everything not containing the patterns

excluding first and last lines from sed /START/,/END/

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