CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashunixawksed
Potential Coder
Potential Coder

Reputation: 91

Remove Lines less than 3 words in a Text File

I have seen commands such as using sed to remove lines based on number of characters but not words.

eg. I have a text file such as 

word1
word1 word2
word1 word2 word3
word1 word2 word3 word4
word1 word2 word4 word5

How would i use (sed or awk) to remove the lines with less than 3 words so output looks like:

word1 word2 word3
word1 word2 word3 word4
word1 word2 word4 word5

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3778

Answers (5)

potong
potong

Reputation: 58483

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed -n 's/\<//3p' file

Upvotes: 1

Kalanidhi
Kalanidhi

Reputation: 5092

You can try is sed command 

sed -n 's/\([^ ]\+ \)\{2,\}/&/p' file_name

[^ ] - until space match each characters
{2,} - which is used to match the preceding pattern more than 2
([^ ]\+ ) - Which is used to match the word.

Upvotes: 1

NeronLeVelu
NeronLeVelu

Reputation: 10039

sed -n '/[^ ]\([^ ]*  *[^ ]\)\{2\}/ p' YourFile
# or
sed -n '/[^ ]  *[^ ][^ ]*  *[^ ]/ p' YourFile

Regx is: At least 1 non space with at least 1 space with at least 1 non space with at least 1 space with at least 1 non space

to ensure that (word1 word2) is not taking sourround space as word separator with no word to separe at the extremities

Upvotes: 1

Avinash Raj
Avinash Raj

Reputation: 174786

You could do this simply in awk,

$ awk 'NF>=3' file
word1 word2 word3
word1 word2 word3 word4
word1 word2 word4 word5

It prints the lines which has three or more fields.

Upvotes: 6

Jotne
Jotne

Reputation: 41460

Here is how to do it with awk, If its more than 2 fields, print it:

awk 'NF>2' file
word1 word2 word3
word1 word2 word3 word4
word1 word2 word4 word5

Upvotes: 4

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