UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Dear people, can you please enlighten:
I need to do a (most probably) very simple thing but couldn't figure how.

I have files with lots of lines starting with a fixed expression:

Query=. (the dot is a space)

followed by different combinations of characters including special ones such as pipe (|), and I need to find the second space in the line and remove the rest of line starting from this second space.

Is that possible to to this with SED? or is there a script needed?

thanks much in advance for help!

Assuming you only want to change lines beginning with "Query=":

Code:

sed '/^Query=/s/\([^ ]* [^ ]*\) .*/\1/' file > newfile

Regards

thanks much! works fine

but what if in my strings starting with the "Query=" I wanted to change all spaces into, say, '_' except for the first space in the string (the contents of strings differ except for the marking 'Query=')?
Couldn't figure how to do this with regions..

thanks much for help!

Code:

sed -e 's/ /_/g' -e 's/_/ /1' file

thanks a lot !_!