UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi
I try to copy part of text from one file to another file. My problem is the text in the new file loses all the format.

My code is:
#!/bin/sh
while red line
do
if [ "$line" != "THE END" ]
then
echo "$line" >> ./new_file
else
break
fi
done < "./old_file"

Is there a way to modify my code so that the new file keeps the format (i.e. tab) ?

Thanks in advance for any help

You can tweak the IFS but properly using read/echo like this is a bit of a voodoo art when it comes to preserving whitespace and control character formatting.

Code:

#!/bin/sh
IFS='
'  # set IFS to newline (in single quotes)
while red line
do
if [ "$line" != "THE END" ]
then
echo "$line" >> ./new_file
else
break
fi
done < "./old_file"

Could you be persuaded to use, say, sed instead?

Code:

sed -n -e '/^THE END$/q' -e p old_file >new_file

The sed command above can combined as:

Code:

sed -n '/^THE END$/q;p' old_file > new_file

or with awk:

Code:

awk '/^THE END$/{exit}1' old_file > new_file

Regards

Thank you era.
sed works very well