deleting specific lines from all files in a directory - UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

vrms · #1 04-25-2008

I have a directory full of text data files.

Unfortunately I need to get rid of the 7th and 8th line from them all so that I can input them into a GIS application.

I've used an awk script to do one at a time but due to the sheer number of files I need some kind of loop mechanism to automate it.

The awk script used: -
awk 'BEGIN{getline f;getline t}FNR==f,FNR==t{next}1' numbers.txt inputfile > outputfile

where numbers.txt is merely a document with the numbers 7 and 8

My guess is that I need a way of piping the output from ls (of the directory) into where the inputfile is situated and a counter to loop through till the end.

Any suggestions will be welcome (an awk suggestion would be preferable to pearl)

Thanks all

era · #2 04-25-2008

Code:

for f in *; do
  awk 'NR!=7 && NR!=8' "$f" >"$f.tmp"
  mv "$f.tmp" "$f"
done

It would actually be easier in sed, but if you have weird hangups about anything which isn't awk ...

ls has no particular use here; it's the shell which expands wildcards, not ls.

vrms · #3 04-25-2008

worked a charm

Thanks esa

cheers

vrms · #4 04-25-2008

oops sorry

era I mean

cheers

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