UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I want to delete the header and footer in the file by using sed for that i ran the below script and my text file looks like

emp.txt

# This file contain employee
# information

abc 12300 34 'FGH'


# This is confidential as per the firm rules.


my intention is to remove the header and footer lines, so i ran the below script

sed s/#*// file1.txt>file2.txt

as a result i get the below content in file2.txt

This file contain employee
information

abc 12300 34 'FGH'

This is confidential as per the firm rules.


it just removed the '#' symbol but i want to remove the entire line.

can we do that using sed command?

Code:

sed 's/#.*//' file1.txt >file2.txt

This will also work:

Code:

pandeeswaran@ubuntu:~$ cat test
#thiS file contain employee
# information

abc 12300 34 'FGH'


# This is confidential as per the firm rules.

pandeeswaran@ubuntu:~$ sed -e '/^#/d' test

abc 12300 34 'FGH'

yes it is working fine. could you explain difference between your's executed command and mine?

dear ctsgnb,

could you explain the difference between
sed s/#*// file1.txt>file2.txt

and
sed 's/#.*//' file1.txt >file2.txt

?

The difference is in the regex meaning :

#* means 0 or more # character
#.* means # followed by 0 or more of any charater

My solution is deleting any line starting with #

Easier with "grep"? Ignore all lines starting with a hash character.

Code:

grep -v \^\# file1.txt>file2.txt