UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

hi all
I know this is a very simple question but any help would be much appreciated. with other threads not so far having come up with a solution.

I have many long .txt files which have column which looks something like this:

Code:

head test.txt
-3.3
2.3
-11.1
....
1.2
....
-3.1
....

All I want to do is to delete the lines which have the "..." string on them.

I have tried for example this command, but this seems to remove all the positive values in the file for some reason:

Code:

sed 's/^....$//' test.txt > test2.txt

I'm sure there is a very simple way using awk, sed, grep, etc so if anyone can enlighten I'd be very grateful.

cheers,
epf

. is a special character in regular expressions which means 'one of any character', i.e. your regex will match anything that is four characters long. To make it match only literal ., you have to use \. in the regex.

The quickest way for me would be to do this:

Code:

grep -v "\.\.\.\." test.txt > test2.txt

Code:

grep '[0-9]' file

Code:

grep -vF .... file

thanks a lot everyone, all of the above worked for me!