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Accepted
Joe Cola
Asked: 2022-12-13 22:49:01 +0800 CST

How to delete a range of lines in a text file?

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I want to know how to quickly delete text with Bash. For example, I have a file named file.txt with a total of 500 lines.

I want to delete lines 80 to 146 - how do I do that?

What's is a terminal command that can do that?

command-line

2 Answers

  1. If this is one time I would use vi or vim

    vi {filename}
:86,146d
:wq

    That last one saves and quits. Using sed:

    sed '86,146d' {file}

    Make a backup if unsure so you can revert.

    • 5
  2. Best Answer

    With awk to print in terminal:

    awk 'NR < 80 || NR > 146' file.txt

    Or with gawk to edit file in-place:

    gawk -i inplace 'NR < 80 || NR > 146' file.txt
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