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unixsedline-numbers

Delete specific line number(s) from a text file using sed?

I want to delete one or more specific line numbers from a file. How would I do this using sed?

Solution

  • If you want to delete lines from 5 through 10 and line 12th:

    sed -e '5,10d;12d' file

    This will print the results to the screen. If you want to save the results to the same file:

    sed -i.bak -e '5,10d;12d' file

    This will store the unmodified file as file.bak, and delete the given lines.

    Note: Line numbers start at 1. The first line of the file is 1, not 0.