Removing all but last 5 lines

p1xty · 11-03-2011, 05:47 AM

Hi,

I want to be able to remove everything but the last five lines of a .txt file. I looked at a sed tutorial but I was only able to figure out a way to remove all lines but the last but I need the last five lines. The file size is variable so specifying line numbers isn't possible. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

syg00 · 11-03-2011, 05:49 AM

"man tail"

p1xty · 11-03-2011, 05:51 AM

Tail...of course! Thanks.

fukawi1 · 11-03-2011, 05:53 AM

If you want to do this through a script or command line, you can do it with tail.

Code:

tail -n 5 $oldfile > $newfile

will create a new file containing only the last 5 lines

Code:

tail -n 5 $oldfile > $newfile && mv $newfile $oldfile

will replace the original with the new file, effectively removing the all but the last 5 lines.

See "man tail" for further information..