Questions tagged [text-processing]
Questions about modifying, creating or parsing plain text files. This is a very broad tag, if your question is about using a specific tool, please tag it with the tool's name as well (e.g. sed, awk, perl, etc.)
99
questions
927
votes
8
answers
2.0m
views
Find and replace text within a file using commands
How can I find and replace specific words in a text file using command line?
14
votes
8
answers
37k
views
How to remove particular words from lines of a text file?
my text file looks like this:
Liquid penetration 95% mass (m) = 0.000205348
Liquid penetration 95% mass (m) = 0.000265725
Liquid penetration 95% mass (m) = 0.000322823
Liquid penetration 95% mass (m) ...
18
votes
7
answers
64k
views
How to find lines matching a pattern and delete them?
In a file with lots of lines I want to delete lines that starts with HERE IT IS.
How can I do this using only command-line tools?
12
votes
2
answers
4k
views
Tool to insert text snippets into applications
In German you start mails and letters with "Sehr geehrter Herr ....".
I am tired of typing this again and again. And I am tired of configuring applications to give me shortcuts to insert text blocks ...
24
votes
2
answers
77k
views
How do I grep for multiple patterns on multiple lines?
To be precise
Some text
begin
Some text goes here.
end
Some more text
and I want to extract entire block that starts from "begin" till "end".
with awk we can do like awk '/begin/,/end/' text.
How ...
176
votes
7
answers
416k
views
How to find a text file which contains a specific word inside (not in its name)
I want to find a text file in my hard disk which contains a specific word.
Prior to Ubuntu 12.4 I used to start in the dash an application, I think it was called "Search for file...", whose icon was ...
27
votes
6
answers
4k
views
How to "cat" or "less" a libreoffice writer .odt file?
Is there a way to cat or less a .odt file just as antiword does for .doc files?
21
votes
8
answers
88k
views
How can I print multiline output on the same line?
Is there a method to print multi-line output (single output) on the same line?
For example, if the output is:
abc
def
qwerty
Is it possible to print:
abcdefqwerty
17
votes
7
answers
4k
views
How do I retrieve only the needed line from terminal output?
I want to get only let's say third line of df -h output.
What kind of command should I use?
64
votes
7
answers
220k
views
Grep searching two words in a line
I've been trying to find a way to filter a line that has the word "lemon" and "rice" in it. I know how to find "lemon" or "rice" but not the two of them. They don't need to be next to the other, ...
22
votes
5
answers
18k
views
How can I merge files on a line by line basis?
cat file1
foo
ice
two
cat file2
bar
cream
hundred
Desired output:
foobar
icecream
twohundred
file1 and file2 will always have the same amount of lines in my scenario, in case that makes things ...
15
votes
11
answers
80k
views
Remove the first part of a string using sed
How do I get from this:
randomcollege-nt\user90
to this:
user90
using sed?
7
votes
9
answers
9k
views
How to sort by row from terminal
I was looking at this question and I wondered if the following could be done from terminal. I did it in python, just want to see if it could be done from terminal, bash scripting or whatever.
...
2
votes
1
answer
1k
views
apache2 : How to search a string from apache2 error logs in specific time range?
I have logs like this , I want to search the string Form1Debugging from date [Sun Oct 01 04:26:29.593869 2017] to [Tue Oct 03 04:26:29.593869 2017]
[Tue Oct 03 04:26:29.593869 2017] [:error] [pid ...
109
votes
5
answers
406k
views
How do I fetch only numbers in grep?
I have file like this :
other lines . . .
blah blah blah (:34)
I wish to find the occurrence of numbers in the above file. I came up with:
grep [0-9] filename
But that is printing the whole:
...
101
votes
8
answers
375k
views
How to remove lines from the text file containing specific words through terminal?
How to remove all the lines from the text file containing the words "cat" and "rat"?
37
votes
6
answers
139k
views
How to replace spaces with newlines/enter in a text-file?
I have simple text file named "example".
Reading with terminal command: cat example
Output:
abc cdef ghi jk lmnopq rst uv wxyz
I want to convert (transform) into following form: (expected output ...
23
votes
5
answers
68k
views
How to replace a string on the 5th line of multiple text files?
I want to replace the 5th line of multiple text files (file1.txt,file2.txt,file3.txt,file4.txt) with the string " Good Morning " using a single terminal command.
All the text files are located on my ~...
13
votes
1
answer
10k
views
Why has gnome-search-tool gone?
It appears the gnome-search-tool is not available in Bionic. On https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/amd64/gnome-search-tool/3.6.0-2 it says status Deleted.
I've downloaded the deb from Wily Proposed ...
10
votes
7
answers
27k
views
Concatenate two files and separate them with a newline
I have two files:
k.txt:
3 5 7 9 19 20
h.txt:
000010
100001
111001
if I just use cat, there is no newline. I need a command which would provide a file which looks like this:
3 5 7 9 19 20
...
7
votes
1
answer
1k
views
How can I verify the integrity of an mbox archive from the command line?
I have a large mbox file backup from gmail. It's over 5GB, and gets updated with new messages every night via a cron job. I would like the cron job to also check the validity of the archive, to make ...
6
votes
2
answers
12k
views
Print only one line at a time from text file
how can I print or display only word from a text file at a time.
When I run my script it should only display each word from the text file one by one, but only display that word.
This is what I have ...
6
votes
2
answers
7k
views
How to cat file with limit of printed characters from each line?
I would like to cat file, but with limit to max length to each line. For example I a have file with 10 lines each have 10000 characters and I would like to print first 100 characters from each line. ...
6
votes
4
answers
25k
views
Comparing two text files
I have 2 big csv files, file1.csv which looks like this
1,2,3,4
1,4,5,6
1,7,8,9
1,11,13,17
file2.csv which looks like this
1,2,3,4
1,7,8,9
2,4,9,10
13,14,17,18
These are just random numbers that I ...
6
votes
6
answers
8k
views
How do I remove lines of a file which contain a specific string?
How do I remove lines of a file (hosts) which contain "adf.ly" string?
5
votes
3
answers
6k
views
ASCII source file checker
For official Ubuntu documentation where the source English files are in docbook xml, there is a requirement of ASCII only characters. We use a "checker" command line (see here).
grep --color='auto' -...
4
votes
4
answers
270
views
I need to use sed/awk to get desired output
Order:479959,60=20130624-09:45:02.046|35=D|11=884|38=723|21=1|1=30532|10=085|59=0|114=Y|56=MBT|40=1|43=Y|100=MBTX|55=/GCQ3|49=11342|54=1|8=FIX.4.4|34=388|553=2453|9=205|52=20130624-09:45:02.046|
...
4
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Find and delete a line that starts with a certain string in a file
My file currently has
Name. Address. Phone number
Jack. L.A 1435672
John L.A. 1465432
Nick. F.l. 1489756
When the user wants to delete ...
4
votes
4
answers
16k
views
How to delete specific lines from a txt file
I have a Bash script that writes data into a log file, then from that I take out stuff I want using the sed command. That gives me a file data.txt. What I want to know is how I go about deleting ...
4
votes
1
answer
456
views
Search and replace a pattern containing backslashes
I have a file
bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
\newcommand{\datestamp}{20180215}
bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
I need ...
3
votes
3
answers
5k
views
How to get values after an equal sign
I have a file delimited with space and random column ordering as follows:
name=Joan age=42 ip=172.20.1.80 sex=M loc=UK
loc=IR sex=F ip=172.20.1.1 age=32 name=Sandra
I want to extract specific ...
3
votes
5
answers
2k
views
Join two files, adding values in certain columns
How can I add another 2 values after matching the values from 2 columns in another file just like VLOOKUP?
Sample below. Value in column 6 & 7 from file1, when matched with column 1 & 2 from ...
2
votes
2
answers
37k
views
How would I edit a .conf file without gedit from the terminal over SSH?
I guess my question is closer to "How would I go about editing a .conf file from a remote connection via an ssh terminal?"
I downloaded an ssh emulator to my iPhone which works fine and dandy, and I ...
2
votes
4
answers
838
views
how to separate each content in the file?
I have a text file (more then 1GB in size) and it contains lines like these:
...
2
votes
3
answers
469
views
Somehow I created a nondeterministic sh script
I created the following script:
#!bin/bash
cat > Top10 <<EOF
Linux Mint 17.2
Ubuntu 15.10
Debian GNU/Linux 8.2
Mageria 5
Fedora 23
openSUSE Leap 42.1
Arch Linux
CentOS 7.2-1511
PCLinuxOS ...
1
vote
1
answer
121
views
How can I extract records from a file if they include a specific set of strings?
I am analyzing a file xyz.txt which contains hifen separated records. I want to extract records based on the presence of the strings FADED:100, AM:FF and GG. Subsequently, I need to write them to a ...
1
vote
1
answer
1k
views
searching for specialized patterns using grep in a json file
I wonder how can I only grep the "created_at": ones that are followed by }, and a new line like below:
"hashtags": [],
"urls": []
},
"created_at": "Wed Oct 19 22:19:42 +0000 ...
1
vote
1
answer
516
views
How can I use the grep --color command to highlight brackets?
I want to highlight every [ in any color so i can see the hidden message here:
[###[#[[[#[###[#[[[#[[[#[###[#[[[
[###[##[##[[##[#[####[##[[##[##[#
[######[##[#[#[#[[[##[##[#[#[##[#
[######[##[##[[#[#...
0
votes
2
answers
256
views
Something with .txt File? [duplicate]
I have stored a text as .txt while saving it in Gedit in Ubuntu 14.04.
But after viewing that folder, which i have stored will have two files with that name but with 'Tilde Symbol' '~' for an ...
0
votes
1
answer
193
views
How to import an mbox file into the Pine or Alpine mail client?
I'm a light Alpine e-mail client user.
If I navigate into ~/mail and run mail -f baz I'll get an expected list of old alpine/pine messages.
Alpine doesn't use mbox.
I added an mbox backup to that ...
155
votes
13
answers
409k
views
How to compare two files
I want to compare two files line by line and by column number 2. How could I accomplish this?
File_1.txt:
User1 US
User2 US
User3 US
File_2.txt:
User1 US
User2 US
User3 NG
Output_File:
User3 has ...
104
votes
5
answers
444k
views
How to separate fields with space or tab in awk
While playing with awk I came to execute:
ls -la >> a.txt ; awk {'print $5 $1'} a.txt ;
This is giving output like:
53277-rw-------
52347-rw-------
How can I get a space between these two ...
51
votes
4
answers
286k
views
How to grep for groups of n digits, but no more than n?
I'm learning Linux, and I have a challenge that I seem to fail to solve on my own. Here it is:
grep a line from a file which contains 4 numbers in a row but not more than 4.
I'm not sure how to ...
33
votes
8
answers
26k
views
Prepend ## to every line in a text file
I want to add hashes to all the lines in a regular text file. I'm fine with both the use of terminal and GUI—I just need to get it done.
22
votes
8
answers
24k
views
How can I repeat the content of a file n times?
I'm trying to benchmark to compare two different ways of processing a file. I have a small amount of input data but in order to get good comparisons, I need to repeat the tests a number of times.
...
13
votes
6
answers
11k
views
Print a specific part in an output
Let us suppose that there is a command such as:
cat /boot/config-3.19.0-32-generic | grep CONFIG_ARCH_DEFCONFIG
The output is as such:
CONFIG_ARCH_DEFCONFIG="arch/x86/configs/x86_64_defconfig"
Now,...
11
votes
6
answers
14k
views
How to convert from row to column?
I have a .txt file with numbers ordered like this (on the same row):
106849_01373 106849_01967 106850_00082 23025.7_01059
I would like to convert them like that:
106849_01373
...
11
votes
6
answers
2k
views
How can I get bash/zsh to change some text from "foo.foo.foo" to "foo foo foo" with a script/alias?
I can maybe use < or > or |. Maybe I need to use grep?
11
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Compare source code files, ignoring formatting differences (like whitespace, linebreaks, ...)
I am looking for an application that can compare two C++ sources and find the code-meaningful differences (to compare versions which may have been reformatted differently).
At the very minimum, ...
9
votes
4
answers
43k
views
Replace or add a string to a file
I know sed can replace a piece of string within a text file like this :
sed -i 's/oldstring/newstring/g' test.txt
But, how do I replace the line if it exists and automatically add it on a new line ...