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Vi delete line with second occurence of pattern

 
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# 1  
Old 03-26-2015
Question Vi delete line with second occurence of pattern
I have a large file and many lines are duplicated. I'm trying to delete lines with every second occurrence of a pattern. Did tried searching similar question but no luck.


I can delete all lines matching pattern with :g/pattern/d but don't want to lose data.


Sample pattern to delete John-------Doe
Code:
Sample data:
Time--------FName---------LName
11:05-------John------------Doe
11:05-------John------------Doe
11:06-------Michael---------Lawrence
11:06-------Michale---------Lawrence

Expected result:
11:05-------John------------Doe
11:06-------Michael---------Lawrence

Last edited by rbatte1; 03-26-2015 at 01:43 PM.. Reason: Added ICODE tags
# 2  
Old 03-26-2015
Quote:
Originally Posted by homer4all
...
Sample pattern to delete John-------Doe
Code:
Sample data:
Time--------FName---------LName
11:05-------John------------Doe
11:05-------John------------Doe
11:06-------Michael---------Lawrence
11:06-------Michale---------Lawrence

Expected result:
11:05-------John------------Doe
11:06-------Michael---------Lawrence

Why do you expect the last line to be removed?
- It is not a duplicate since "Michale" != "Michael"
- It doesn't match the pattern either.

In any case, try this:

Code:
:%s/\v^(.*John------------Doe.*)\n\1/\1/

I have tried it in vim though. It's difficult to get a hold of vi since it's almost always a link to vim in Linux/Cygwin these days.
This User Gave Thanks to durden_tyler For This Post:
homer4all
# 3  
Old 03-26-2015
If there is any chance that the duplicated lines won't be adjacent, awk may be a much better tool for this than vi.

In addition to the misspelling on the last input line; why shouldn't the header line appear in the output? Assuming you do want to keep the header, you could try something like:
Code:
awk 'f[$0]++ == 0' input_file > tmp.$$ && cp tmp.$$ input_file;rm tmp.$$

which, with your sample input, updates your input file to be:
Code:
Time--------FName---------LName
11:05-------John------------Doe
11:06-------Michael---------Lawrence
11:06-------Michale---------Lawrence

If you want to try this on a Solaris/SunOS system, change awk to /usr/xpg4/bin/awk or nawk.
This User Gave Thanks to Don Cragun For This Post:
homer4all
# 4  
Old 03-26-2015
Code:
uniq file > newfile

The newfile will have the adjacent duplicate lines removed.
# 5  
Old 03-26-2015
Don and Durdent .. thank you for those inputs and appreciate your replies, it help to solve my problem, also yes last line was misspell.. Smilie
# 6  
Old 03-28-2015
Just a quick note - you can run Don's awk script inside the vi/vim editor.
Essentially, you can run any command of the OS on which your vi/vim editor was installed.

Code:
:%!awk 'f[$0]++ == 0'

"%" ==> set the entire file as the range on which the awk command will run
"!" ==> run the command of the underlying OS.
"awk 'f[$0]++ == 0' ==> the actual OS command; the "input_file" isn't required here

Once you hit Enter, your duplicate data will be removed within the editor window itself. You can then simply save it. This obviates the need for the temp file.
# 7  
Old 03-28-2015
Quote:
Originally Posted by durden_tyler
Just a quick note - you can run Don's awk script inside the vi/vim editor.
Essentially, you can run any command of the OS on which your vi/vim editor was installed.

Code:
:%!awk 'f[$0]++ == 0'

"%" ==> set the entire file as the range on which the awk command will run
"!" ==> run the command of the underlying OS.
"awk 'f[$0]++ == 0' ==> the actual OS command; the "input_file" isn't required here

Once you hit Enter, your duplicate data will be removed within the editor window itself. You can then simply save it. This obviates the need for the temp file.
If you're in the editor to make other changes to the file anyway, this is a great idea. But, it doesn't get rid of the need for a temp file; it just has vi create the temp file instead of the user creating it explicitly. In fact, there is a good chance that vi (or vim) will create another temp file or two to process the input and output for awk.
 
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