sed to remove 1st two characters every line of text file

ajp7701 · #1 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

what is the sed command to remove the first two characters of every line of a text file?
each line of the text file has the same amount of characters, and they are ALL NUMERIC. there are hundreds of lines though.
for example,

>cat file1.txt
10081551
10081599
10082234
10082259
20081134
20081159
30082232
10087721
>

I want the end result to remove the first two digits of each line

>cat file2.txt
081551
081599
082234
082259
081134
081159
082232
087721
>

Thank you so much!!

migurus · #2 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

cat input_file | sed 's/^..//' > output_file

cfajohnson · #3 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

Code:

sed 's/^..//' file1.txt > file2.txt

danmero · #4 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

man sed to see if your version support -i option.

Code:

sed -i 's/\(.\{2\}\)//' file

radoulov · #5 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

Or even:

Code:

sed  's .\{2\}  ' infile

If your sed supports the -r option:

Code:

sed -r 's .{2}  ' infile

Or:

Code:

sed  's ..  ' infile

ajp7701 · #6 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

thank you all! I'll probably make a new post, but I actually need the last two characters removed also....
>cat file1.txt
10081551
10081599
10082234
10082259
20081134
20081159
30082232
10087721
>
ends up looking like:
>cat file1.txt
100815
100815
100822
100822
200811
200811
300822
100877
>

radoulov · #7 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

Code:

sed 's ..$  ' infile

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