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macostextfile-ioosx-snow-leopard

Delete text from multiple files

I want to delete text from multiple files. It could be from 10 to 1000 files, so deleting it by hand is too much work. I found a couple of SO questions, such as: Delete specific lines in multiple Text Files with freeware App? but none of them helped

To do find and replace, I could write a perl command, but it lacks options. For example, I want to delete the first four lines in all files. Does anyone know a solution? Or maybe an app? I would prefer something without VBScript.

Solution

  • sed(1) or awk(1) would be great for this job. For example, to delete the first 4 lines of all of the .txt files in the current directory:

    sed -i~ 1,4d *.txt

    This will delete the first 4 lines of all .txt files anywhere in a subdirectory of the current directory:

    find . -type f -iname \*.txt -exec sed -i~ 1,4d '{}' +