sed -n


 
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# 1  
Old 12-15-2004
Question sed -n

Hi,
I need a little help to understand this sed code below:


sed -n 1, \$p file1 > file2

This is part of shell program.
What does $p here mean?

Thanks a lot!
# 2  
Old 12-15-2004
Hmmm... All I understand is that this is illegal syntax - you must have made a typo somewhere if the script works.

I think it must have been something like
sed -n '1,$ p' somefile
In which case, it'd print each line once (without -n it'd print each line twice - once because of standard behaviour, twice because you've asked it to).

-n suppresses the standard behaviour of printing the pattern space. This can be useful for only printing certain lines, for example, to print only lines that contain the word foo
sed -n '/foo/p' somefile

Cheers
ZB
# 3  
Old 12-15-2004
This is legal syntax. You don't need to to quote everything. If the $ is quoted, the shell will leave it alone.

It might even be useful if we really stretch. Suppose you have a text file. If you do:
echo bogus\\c >> textfile

textfile will have an incomplete last line.

sed -n 1,\$p textfile > textfile2
will remove that incomplete last line. This is a bit different than "cat textfile > textfile2".

Well I said it was a stretch! Smilie
# 4  
Old 12-15-2004
Well; without the space between , and \ it is legal! Smilie I just copied/pasted the OP's code into both Linux (bash) and HP-UX (sh-posix) and it fails.

Cheers
ZB
# 5  
Old 12-15-2004
sed -n $line_numb, \$p file1 > file2

It worked on Unix Solaris. Although I am trying to figure out the purpuse of this code.



Perderabo,
What does \\c mean here?

echo bogus\\c >> textfile


Thanks!
# 6  
Old 12-15-2004
You're right about that space. I didn't notice it. BTW, as to the original question, 1,$p says to print all the lines. $ used as an address means the last line.
# 7  
Old 12-15-2004
Re: sed -n $line_numb, \$p file1 > file2

Quote:
Originally posted by whatisthis
Perderabo,
What does \\c mean here?

echo bogus\\c >> textfile
It mean to suppress the newline.
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