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Showing the first 4 lines of a file?

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# 1  
Old 10-14-2010
Showing the first 4 lines of a file?
Is there a way to show the first 4 lines of a file without using head -4?
In sed would it be sed '1,4d' ?

What if I just wanted to display the 2nd line ONLY?

How could this be done with AWK?...correctly with SED?
Last edited by puttster; 10-14-2010 at 10:10 PM..
# 2  
Old 10-14-2010
Code:
$ ruby -ne '(print and exit) if $.==2 ' file

This User Gave Thanks to kurumi For This Post:
puttster
# 3  
Old 10-14-2010
Code:
awk 'NR<=4' infile

awk 'NR==2' infile

This User Gave Thanks to rdcwayx For This Post:
puttster
# 4  
Old 10-14-2010
Thanks problem solved
# 5  
Old 10-15-2010
Using sed
to print 2nd line alone
sed -n 2p filename

to print first four line

sed -n 1,4p filename
# 6  
Old 10-15-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by puttster
Is there a way to show the first 4 lines of a file without using head -4?
In sed would it be sed '1,4d' ?

What if I just wanted to display the 2nd line ONLY?

How could this be done with AWK?...correctly with SED?

It can be done in the shell without using any external command:
Code:
{
 IFS= read -r line1
 IFS= read -r line2
 IFS= read -r line3
 IFS= read -r line4
} < "$file"

Then you can print whichever lines you want, e.g., lines 1 and 3:
Code:
printf "%s\n" "$line1" "$line3"

# 7  
Old 10-15-2010
If you have a large file we can get sed to exit as soon as the job is done rather than trawl the whole file:

Code:
First four lines:
sed '4q' largefile

Second line only:
sed '2q;d' largefile

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