Home / ubuntu / Questions / 561011
In Process
Justin
Asked: 2014-12-14 10:21:31 +0800 CST

Deleting an entire line in a file that contains a certain string

  • 772

I'm interested in figuring out a way to delete an entire line in a text file that contains a particular string. This will be for a text file that operates like a phone book containing names, address, phone numbers, etc

[Ex]

John Smith, 123 Fake St, 555-555-555

I want to know how I can search for a particular name and remove the entire line that contains it. So for the example above, I would search for "John" or "Smith" or "John Smith" and remove the entire line that contains those words.

Would I used grep, or sed for this? I want it to make a permanent change to the file

bash

1 Answers

  1. You could use d command from sed.

    To remove all lines containing word John, you would do

    sed --in-place /John/d ./file

    In case of Multiple criterions, use the -e command

    sed --in-place -e '/John/d; /John Smith/d' ./file
    • 1