Bash scripting - How to delete lines of a file?

 

In this tutorial, we play with deleting some lines of a file using Bash.

Content

• Create a simple file for the tutorial
• How to delete n-th line?
• How to delete several lines within a range?
• How to delete lines with patterns?

Create a simple file for the tutorial. 

First, let's create a simple file for this tutorial using the following command with seq and tee.

$seq 6 | tee delete.txt

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6




How to delete n-th line? with sed

$sed '5d' delete.txt	# delete 5th line

Output:

1
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6

$sed '$d' delete.txt	# delte the last line, $ inidicates the last line in sed

Output:

1
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5

How to delete several lines within a range?

$sed '2,4d' delete.txt

Output:

1
5
6

How to delete lines with patterns?

$sed '/2/d' delete.txt	# /pattern/ to delete

Output:

1
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4
5
6