UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi

I was wondering if it's possible to use a command to get the first 3 characters of a line in a text file, I tried grep but it returns the whole line but I am only interested in the first 3 characters. Is this possible with grep or I need any other command?

Also is it possible deleting from a position to another in VI? For example delete from posistion 1 to 10 in all lines, I searched the whole VI man page but I couldnt find anything, only how to delete lines and words


Cheers

U could grep the line out and then cut it.
grep 'text' filename | cut -c 1-3 should help.
As regards vi I do not think man pages will show you how.
But it can be easily done.

In VI it is possible to delete from lines doing the following:

:1,5s!^[^|][^|]!!

This will delete from line 1 to 5 the first two charachters it comes across.

The ^ is beginning of the line and [^|] is each charchter you would want to delete.

All lines could be done with:

%s!^[^|][^|]!!


Hope it helps