06-02-2005
You told us you want everything except for the last and the first line, but presented us a 5-line file in your first post. Does this mean you want to skip all empty lines?
Supposing you want empty lines to go into your result (this would yield not only the line "my name is mani" in you first example, but also the two empty lines surrounding it) you could use:
# cat <file> | sed -n '1d; $d; p'
This will ignore the last and first line and print out everything else. In case you want to skip empty lines (lines containing only whitespace) too:
# cat <file> | sed -n '1d; $d; /^[<blank><tab>]*$/d; p'
To display the first/last line is trivial and could be done by sed too, but you have gotten a working solution already. To display the first nonblank line use:
# cat <file> | sed -n '/^[<blank><tab>]*$/d; /^..*$/ {; p; q;}'
You should be able to work out the solution for the last nonblank line now for yourself. "<blank>" and "<tab>" in the text above is to be replaced by literal blanks and tabs of course.
bakunin
10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting
1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers
Hi,
I have this problem of separating 10 consecutive lines from a file, say starting from 21 to 30... I have used a filter like this..
head -n 30 myfile | tail -n 10
Is there a simpler way than this? (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: Vishnu
2 Replies
2. Shell Programming and Scripting
Hi falks,
I have the following configuration file structure:
file1:N
file2:Y
file3:Y
file4:N
......
I need to cut from the configuration file only the file with the sign "Y" in the end and copy it to some directory.
What is the best way to do it?
Thanks in advance,
Nir (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: nir_s
8 Replies
3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers
are there any basic commands that can display lines 99 - 101 of the /etc/passwd file?
I'm thinking use of head and tail, but I forget what numbers to use and where to put /etc/passwd in the command. (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: raidkridley
2 Replies
4. Shell Programming and Scripting
First I have to say thank you to this community and this forum. You helped me very much builing several useful scripts.
Now, I can't get a solution the following problem, I'm stuck somehow. Maybe someone has an idea.
In short, I dump a site via lynx and pipe the output in a file. I need to... (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: lowmaster
7 Replies
5. Shell Programming and Scripting
Dear All,
Is there a way to cut the lines that have been "head"
Here is what i m trying to do Please advice
there is file name dummy.txt
now i am trying to head this file 4 time by using a loop and every time this file is head with different values
e.g in first instance it will... (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: jojo123
7 Replies
6. Shell Programming and Scripting
testfile.csv
0","1125209",,"689202CBx18888",,"49",,,"NONMC",,,,,"01112010",,,,,,,"MTM-
"1","",,"689202ABx19005",,"49",,,"NONMC",,,,,"01072010",,,,,,,"MTM-
testfile.csv looks like above format
if the second column is null then get 23rd column and store in a different varible .. add all the... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: mgant
1 Replies
7. Shell Programming and Scripting
Hi,
how do I go about cutting out the first numeric characters after the word "access"?
access1005101228.merged-00.15.17.86.d8.b8.log.gz (16 Replies)
Discussion started by: GermanJulian
16 Replies
8. Shell Programming and Scripting
Hi, i have a file containing nrows and 3cols. i want to cut it in specific length and save output to individual files.
1 2 3
4 5 6
5 8 9
10 11 12
13 14 15
16 17 18
i need to cut the file say every 2 rows and save it in individual file.
01.dat contains
1 2 3
4 5 6
02.dat
7 8 9... (10 Replies)
Discussion started by: ida1215
10 Replies
9. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers
This could be a really dummy question.
I have a log text file.
What unix command to extract line from specific string to another specific string.
Is it something similar to?:
more +/"string" file_name
Thanks (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: aku
4 Replies
10. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers
I am trying to remove columns 81-97 from a line that can be as long as 114 characters. Because a number of lines might not have under 80 characters, using the cut command following by paste could be a problem. While sed might work, is there some other utility that could do this more easily?
... (9 Replies)
Discussion started by: wbport
9 Replies
LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN
plan9-read
CAT(1) General Commands Manual CAT(1)
NAME
cat, read, nobs - catenate files
SYNOPSIS
cat [ file ... ]
read [ -m ] [ -n nline ] [ file ... ]
nobs [ file ... ]
DESCRIPTION
Cat reads each file in sequence and writes it on the standard output. Thus
cat file
prints a file and
cat file1 file2 >file3
concatenates the first two files and places the result on the third.
If no file is given, cat reads from the standard input. Output is buffered in blocks matching the input.
Read copies to standard output exactly one line from the named file, default standard input. It is useful in interactive rc(1) scripts.
The -m flag causes it to continue reading and writing multiple lines until end of file; -n causes it to read no more than nline lines.
Read always executes a single write for each line of input, which can be helpful when preparing input to programs that expect line-at-a-
time data. It never reads any more data from the input than it prints to the output.
Nobs copies the named files to standard output except that it removes all backspace characters and the characters that precede them. It is
useful to use as $PAGER with the Unix version of man(1) when run inside a win (see acme(1)) window.
SOURCE
/src/cmd/cat.c
/src/cmd/read.c
/bin/nobs
SEE ALSO
cp(1)
DIAGNOSTICS
Read exits with status eof on end of file or, in the -n case, if it doesn't read nlines lines.
BUGS
Beware of and which destroy input files before reading them.
CAT(1)