Delete a range of lines in a CSV file except a line inbetween the given range

Question

How to delete a range of lines in a CSV file except a line(or few lines which or not consecutive) in between the given range... Lets say I need to delete the first five lines of a CSV file but keep the 3rd line as is, how do you achieve this. I tried to get this using SED but no help.

sed '1,5d;3!d' filenname.CSV > tempfilename.txt

I know I can do this by giving the range as

sed '1,2d;4,5d' filenname.CSV > tempfilename.txt

However, was wondering if there is a work around that i can specify a range to delete and give the exception of a line(or lines which or not consecutive) in between

Please correct if I am wrong.

Thanks in advance, Dhruuv

Answer 1

This might work for you:

sed '1,5{3!d}' file

or:

sed '1,5!b;3!d' file

or:

sed '3b;1,5d' file

Answer 2

1_CR has the answer you are looking for but for fun you can use awk.

awk '!(NR>0 && NR<6) || NR==3' file

Ignores line 1 to 5 but prints line 3 and all remaining lines.

Answer 3

Recast your sed example to the below

sed '1,5{3p;d}' filenname.CSV > tempfilename.txt

Or to print the 3rd and 4th lines while deleting everything else from the range 1-5

sed '1,5{3p;4p;d}' filenname.CSV > tempfilename.txt

Answer 4

perl -ne 'print unless 1..5 and not 3..3' filename.CSV > tempfilename.txt

would work if you can use perl instead of sed.