My second homework assignment asks for us to write a command in Unix or Linux to extract certain sections of multiple files using head and tail. I'm not understanding how to go about this. Here is the question:
(5 points) Using head and tail, write a command to extract the second section of a file (i.e. the data section). Turn this into an executable script called extractdata (you do not need to hand this in). Then use find and extractdata, write a command to get the second section of all .csv files in the month directories, and place the output into a file called polls.csv. Be sure to keep this file in your homedir. You will use it again on the next assignment. [hint] Inside the script don't forget the command line variable $1. example: head -52 $1
The .csv files consist of three parts: (1) a two line header, describing the fields; (2) 51 lines representing data for each state (plus Washington DC); (3) the rest of the file is summary information. The data fields for each state in the second part is comma separated. I have to get the second section.
Thank you.
Use head to extract the first 53 lines. Use tail to extract the last 51 lines of the result (effectively ignoring the first 2 header lines).