CODEWITHSUNDEEP
unix
Vivek S
Vivek S

Reputation: 53

How to extract contents of a file between x to y lines

I have a text file which has millions of lines. I wanted to extract texts between some X to Y lines. How I can achieve this effectively.

Which is the best method to do this.

Thanks A lot.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 109

Answers (4)

Kent
Kent

Reputation: 195209

if your file is really huge, I would do: (assume x, y are start and end line numbers)

sed -n 'x,yp;yq' file

or 

awk 'NR==x{p=1}NR==y+1{exit}p' file

The above commands will stop further processing after reaching line y. It may save you some time.

Upvotes: 2

1010
1010

Reputation: 1858

you can use head and tail.

head -n Y yourfile | tail -n (Y-X+1)

you should replace (Y-X+1) with the number.

Upvotes: 0

IndieTech Solutions
IndieTech Solutions

Reputation: 2539

@rahul answer is correct. Alternatively, you can use head and tail in combination:

tail -n +x input.txt | head -n y > output.txt

This time, tail -n +x prints out the entire file starting from line x, and head -n y prints the first y+1 lines of that . It's redirected to output.txt in the same way.

Upvotes: 1

Rahul Tripathi
Rahul Tripathi

Reputation: 172568

You can try this:

sed -n x,yp yourfile > newfilename

Just replace x and y with the range of lines from which you want to extract contents.

Upvotes: 2

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