Trim first 10 lines out of a file

hattori.hanzo · 11-12-2008, 04:50 AM

How would one trim/cut the first 10 lines of a file.

I had a look at cut,head,tail and trim. are their any other commands to look at or techniques?

thanks.

anonobomber · 11-12-2008, 04:56 AM

awk '{if (NR!=10) {print}}' cut.me.file

H_TeXMeX_H · 11-12-2008, 05:22 AM

Try

Code:

sed '1,10d' infile > outfile

colucix · 11-12-2008, 05:34 AM

Or

Code:

awk 'NR>10' infile > outfile

pinniped · 11-12-2008, 05:34 AM

Dang, I was beaten to the 'awk' script.

Were you successful with 'tail'?

tail --lines=+10 myfile

The docs might give the impression that one of these would work:

tail -+10 myfile
tail +10 myfile

but unfortunately that isn't the case - you have to use '--lines='

colucix · 11-12-2008, 05:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pinniped

The docs might give the impression that one of these would work:

tail -+10 myfile
tail +10 myfile

but unfortunately that isn't the case - you have to use '--lines='

Yes. The syntax tail +N is considered obsolete and it is not valid on some systems, due to the recent POSIX specifications. You can always use this syntax by forcing the tail command to conform to an old POSIX version, for example:

Code:

env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 tail +11 infile

should work on most systems. This defines an environment variable to force POSIX 1003.2-1992 specification. You can find this info in the coreutils manual or in the corresponding section of info coreutils.

Anyway, better to use the --lines option, as you suggested, or its short form:

Code:

tail -n +11 infile

hattori.hanzo · 11-12-2008, 07:48 AM

Thanks guys. I ended up using

Code:

sed '1,10d' infile > outfile

It is good to know about the other approaches too.

Cheers.

H_TeXMeX_H · 11-12-2008, 08:40 AM

There are so many ways to do it, it's hard to chose.

But now that I helped you, you have to craft me a sword