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How do I remove everything after a certain character in text files?

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# 1  
Old 01-14-2009
How do I remove everything after a certain character in text files?
I have a text file with a few thousand lines in the format:

Code:
abcdef*ghijk*lmno
pqrs*tuv
wx*y*z

etc.

What I want to do is, get rid of everything after the SECOND asterik (the *) in each line (including the asterik). So for the example above, it would look like this after the editing:

Code:
abcdef*ghijk
pqrs*tuv
wx*y

How can I do this?
# 2  
Old 01-14-2009
Code:
$ cut -f 1,2 -d'*' filename

# 3  
Old 01-14-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by agn
Code:
$ cut -f 1,2 -d'*' filename

That didn't work; there are still lines with multiple asteriks in them Smilie
# 4  
Old 01-14-2009
Can you paste input lines where you get more than one '*' in output.
# 5  
Old 01-14-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by agn
Can you paste input lines where you get more than one '*' in output.
Code:
foods: vegetables *baby carrots*cabbage*lettuce*tomatoes*

In the original file, I had about 5 more vegetables listed (for this example line).
# 6  
Old 01-14-2009
Code:
$ echo "foods: vegetables *baby carrots*cabbage*lettuce*tomatoes*" | cut -f 1,2 -d'*'
foods: vegetables *baby carrots

Where do you see multiple '*'s in the output ?
# 7  
Old 01-14-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by agn
Code:
$ echo "foods: vegetables *baby carrots*cabbage*lettuce*tomatoes*" | cut -f 1,2 -d'*'
foods: vegetables *baby carrots

Where do you see multiple '*'s in the output ?
I just ran the command, it spit out everything, and I checked the file again, and everything was the same
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