17
votes
9answers
3k views

How can I write to the second line of a file from the command line?

I have an external program that produces an output file (largish, 20K lines possible). I need to insert a new line between the existing line 1 and line 2. I've been looking at awk and sed - I use ...
12
votes
9answers
1k views

There must be a better way to replace single newlines only?

I am in the habit of writing one line per sentence because I typically compile things to LaTex, or am writing in some other format where line breaks get ignored. I use a blank line to indicate the ...
9
votes
3answers
342 views

Process last line first using awk

I have a data file that I want to normalize using awk, based on the last datapoint. Therefor, I would like to access the last data point first, to normalize the data, then process normally. The ...
8
votes
6answers
710 views

Delete lines beginning with #

How do I delete lines beginning with a #, given that there can be whitespace on the left and right of the #? # Master socket provides access to userdb information. It's typically
8
votes
3answers
2k views

Delete the first n bytes of files

I've got an extreme problem, and all of the solutions I can imagine are complicated. According to my UNIX/Linux experience there must be an easy way. I want to delete the first 31 bytes of each file ...
7
votes
10answers
495 views

What's a good way to filter a text file to remove empty lines?

I have a .csv file (on a mac) that has a bunch of empty lines, e.g.: "1", "2", "lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum ...
7
votes
5answers
2k views

Remove comma between the quotes only in a comma delimited file

I have a input file delimited with commas (,). There are some fields enclosed in double quotes that are having a comma in them. Here is the sample row 123,"ABC, DEV 23",345,534.202,NAME I need to ...
7
votes
6answers
1k views

Is there any alternative to grep's -A -B -C switches (to print few lines before and after )?

grep -A 2 -B 3 prints 2 lines after the grep string and prints 3 lines before. grep -C 3 prints 3 Lines before and 3 lines after Unfortunately, the grep I'm using does not support these ...
7
votes
2answers
935 views

A shell script for joining two files

I want to write a shell script that get two files A and B, and get a result like this: File A: user_a tel_a addr_a user_b tel_b addr_b File B: process_1 user_a process_2 user_a process_3 user_b ...
6
votes
7answers
613 views

Slick one-liner to convert a list like “1: 2, 3, 4, 5” to “1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5”

Let's say I have a file that looks something like this: 23: a, b, c, d 24: b, d, f 25: c, g and I want to get output like this: 23.a 23.b 23.c 23.d 24.b 24.d 24.f 25.c 25.g Of course it's not ...
5
votes
7answers
4k views

How to print only last column?

echo -e 'one two three\nfour five six\nseven eight nine' one two three four five six seven eight nine how can I do some "MAGIC" do get this output?: three six nine UPDATE: I don't need it in this ...
5
votes
7answers
248 views

Swapping an unlimited number of columns

I have a file with columns. See below for an example: a b c ... z 1 2 3 ... 26 I'd like to swap all columns where the 1st becomes the last, the second becomes the one before last...etc.. z y x ...
5
votes
4answers
209 views

How could I simplify this command to only use awk?

awk '/user/ {print $1 }' /etc/userdomains | sed 's/://' the format of /etc/userdomains is domain.tld: user otherdomain.tld: otheruser
5
votes
3answers
12k views

How to use regrex with AWK for string replacement in this example?

Suppose there is some text from a file: (bookmarks ("Chapter 1 Introduction 1" "#1" ("1.1 Problem Statement and Basic Definitions 23" "#2") ("Exercises 31" "#30") ("Notes and References 42" "#34")) ) ...
5
votes
2answers
304 views

Replacing missing value blank space with zero

I have input.txt tab-delimited text file around 30K lines, I would like to check each row (s1..s30K lines) for missing value (i.e blank space) and fill the missing value with zero value.See out.txt ...

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