I have a large file of data. Each line is a single record. Sounds like a job for sed.
I want to inspect a few lines of data, one at a time, but they're json with base64 encoded values. To inspect line 2, I run :
sed -n 2p hugeFile | json 'key' | base64 --decode
Which works fine, except that sed seems to carry on going through the file.
Am I using sed incorrectly here, or is it really going through every file, checking each lines to see if it's line 2?
You can combine multiple commands with curly braces, and execute the q command to exit immediately.
sed -n '2{p;q;}' hugeFile
It works like this because you might have multiple commands, or an address that isn't just a single line number. sed doesn't optimze the special case where there's just a single command and it's a line number range.
Related
Suppose I have a file which contains:
something
line=1
file=2
other
lines
ignore
something
line=2
file=3
other
lines
ignore
Eventually, I want a unique list of the line and file combinations in each section. In the first stage I am trying to get sed to output just those lines combined into one line, like
line=1file=2
line=2file=3
Then I can use sort and uniq.
So I am trying
sed -n -r 's/(line=)(.*?)(\r)(file=)(.*?)(\r)/\1\2\4\5/p' sample.txt
(It isn't necessarily just a number after each)
But it won't match across the lines. I have tried \n and \r\n but it doesn't seem to be the style of new line, since:
sed -n -r 's/(line=)(.*?)(\r)/\1\2/p' sample.txt
Will output the "line=" lines, but I just can't get it to span the new line, and collect the second line as well.
By default, sed will operate only on chunks separated by \n character, so you can never match across multiple lines. Some sed implementations support -z option which will make it to operate on chunks separated by ASCII NUL character instead of newline character (this could work for small files, assuming NUL character won't affect the pattern you want to match)
There are also some sed commands that can be used for multiline processing
sed -n '/line=/{N;s/\n//p}'
N command will add the next line to current chunk being processed (which has to match line= in this case)
s/\n//p then delete the newline character, so that you get the output as single line
If your input has dos style line ending, first convert it to unix style (see Why does my tool output overwrite itself and how do I fix it?) or take care of \r as well
sed -n '/line=/{N;s/\r\n//p}'
Note that these commands were tested on GNU sed, syntax may vary for other implementations
I'm trying to extract the name of the file name that has been generated by a Java program. This Java program spits out multiple lines and I know exactly what the format of the file name is going to be. The information text that the Java program is spitting out is as follows:
ABCASJASLEKJASDFALDSF
Generated file YANNANI-0008876_17.xml.
TDSFALSFJLSDJF;
I'm capturing the output in a variable and then applying a sed operator in the following format:
sed -n 's/.*\(YANNANI.\([[:digit:]]\).\([xml]\)*\)/\1/p'
The result set is:
YANNANI-0008876_17.xml.
However, my problem is that want the extraction of the filename to stop at .xml. The last dot should never be extracted.
Is there a way to do this using sed?
Let's look at what your capture group actually captures:
$ grep 'YANNANI.\([[:digit:]]\).\([xml]\)*' infile
Generated file YANNANI-0008876_17.xml.
That's probably not what you intended:
\([[:digit:]]\) captures just a single digit (and the capture group around it doesn't do anything)
\([xml]\)* is "any of x, m or l, 0 or more times", so it matches the empty string (as above – or the line wouldn't match at all!), x, xx, lll, mxxxxxmmmmlxlxmxlmxlm, xml, ...
There is no way the final period is removed because you don't match anything after the capture groups
What would make sense instead:
Match "digits or underscores, 0 or more": [[:digit:]_]*
Match .xml, literally (escape the period): \.xml
Make sure the rest of the line (just the period, in this case) is matched by adding .* after the capture group
So the regex for the string you'd like to extract becomes
$ grep 'YANNANI.[[:digit:]_]*\.xml' infile
Generated file YANNANI-0008876_17.xml.
and to remove everything else on the line using sed, we surround regex with .*\( ... \).*:
$ sed -n 's/.*\(YANNANI.[[:digit:]_]*\.xml\).*/\1/p' infile
YANNANI-0008876_17.xml
This assumes you really meant . after YANNANI (any character).
You can call sed twice: first in printing and then in replacement mode:
sed -n 's/.*\(YANNANI.\([[:digit:]]\).\([xml]\)*\)/\1/p' | sed 's/\.$//g'
the last sed will remove all the last . at the end of all the lines fetched by your first sed
or you can go for a awk solution as you prefer:
awk '/.*YANNANI.[0-9]+.[0-9]+.xml/{print substr($NF,1,length($NF)-1)}'
this will print the last field (and truncate the last char of it using substr) of all the lines that do match your regex.
I'm running Windows and have the GnuWin32 toolkit, which includes sed. Specifically:
C:\TEMP>sed --version
GNU sed version 4.2.1
I have a text file with two sections: A fixed part I want to preserve, and a part that's appended after running a job.
In the file is a unique string that identifies the start of the part that's added, and I'd like to use Gnu sed to isolate only the part of the file that's before the unique string - i.e., so I can append different data to the fixed part each time the job is run.
I know I could keep the fixed portion in a separate file, but that adds complexity and it would be more elegant if I could just reuse the data at the start of the same file.
A long time ago I knew how to set up sed scripts, and I'm sure this can be done with sed, but I've slept since then. :)
Can you please describe how to use sed to display the lines of text in a file up to and not including a specific string?
Example:
line 1 of fixed portion
line 2 of fixed portion
unique string
line 1 of appended portion
line 2 of appended portion
line 3 of appended portion
What I'd like is to see as output:
line 1 of fixed portion
line 2 of fixed portion
I've gotten as far as:
sed -r -n -e "0,/unique string/p"
but that prints the unique string as well.
Thanks in advance.
-Noel
This should work for you:
sed -n '/unique string/q;p' file
It quits processing at unique string. Other lines get printed.
An alternative might be to use a range address like this:
sed -n '1,/unique string/{/unique string/!p}' file
Note that sed includes the range border. We need to exclude unique string from printing.
Furthermore I'm using the -n option which makes sed suppress the output of input lines by default.
One thing, if unique string can contain characters which are also syntax characters in the regex like ...
test*
... sed might not be the right tool for the job any more since it can only match regular expressions but not fixed strings.
In that case awk might be the tool of choice:
awk 'index("*unique string*"){exit}1' file
index("string") returns a non zero value (the position) if the string has been found. We cancel further processing of input lines in that case and don't print that line as well.
The trailing 1 always evaluates to true and makes awk print all the lines until the previous condition applies.
Both grep and sed handle input line-by-line and, as far as I know, getting either of them to handle multiple lines isn't very straightforward. What I'm looking for is an alternative or alternatives to these two programs that treat newlines as just another character. Is there any tool that fits such a criteria
The tool you want is awk. It is record-oriented, not line-oriented, and you can specify your record-separator by setting the builtin variable RS. In particular, GNU awk lets you set RS to any regular expression, not just a single character.
Here is an example where awk uses one blank line to separate every record. If you show us what data you have, we can help you with it.
cat file
first line
second line
third line
fourth line
fifth line
sixth line
seventh line
eight line
more data
Running awk on this and reconstruct data using blank line as new record.
awk -v RS= '{$1=$1}1' file
first line second line third line
fourth line fifth line sixth line
seventh line eight line
more data
PS RS is not equal to file, is set to RS= blank, equal to RS=""
1) Sed can handle a block lines together, not always line by line.
In sed, normally I use :loop; $!{N; b loop}; to get all the lines available in pattern space delimited by newline.
Sample:
Productivity
Google Search\
Tips
"Web Based Time Tracking,
Web Based Todo list and
Reduce Key Stores etc"
result (remove the content between ")
sed -e ':loop; $!{N; b loop}; s/\"[^\"]*\"//g' thegeekstuff.txt
Productivity
Google Search\
Tips
You should read this URL (Unix Sed Tutorial: 6 Examples for Sed Branching Operation), it will give you detail how it works.
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/12/unix-sed-tutorial-6-examples-for-sed-branching-operation/
2) For grep, check if your grep support -z option, which needn't handle input line by line.
-z, --null-data
Treat the input as a set of lines, each terminated by a zero
byte (the ASCII NUL character) instead of a newline. Like the
-Z or --null option, this option can be used with commands like
sort -z to process arbitrary file names.
I'm trying to extract a list of CentOS domain names only from http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=6.4&arch=x86_64&repo=os
Truncating prefix "http://" and "ftp://" to the first "/" character only resulting a list of
yum.phx.singlehop.com
mirror.nyi.net
bay.uchicago.edu
centos.mirror.constant.com
mirror.teklinks.com
centos.mirror.netriplex.com
centos.someimage.com
mirror.sanctuaryhost.com
mirrors.cat.pdx.edu
mirrors.tummy.com
I searched stackoverflow for the sed method but I'm still having trouble.
I tried doing this with sed
curl "http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=6.4&arch=x86_64&repo=os" | sed '/:\/\//,/\//p'
but doesn't look like it is doing anything. Can you give me some advice?
Here you go:
curl "http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=6.4&arch=x86_64&repo=os" | sed -e 's?.*://??' -e 's?/.*??'
Your sed was completely wrong:
/x/,/y/ is a range. It selects multiple lines, from a line matching /x/ until a line matching /y/
The p command prints the selected range
Since all lines match both the start and end pattern you used, you effectively selected all lines. And, since sed echoes the input by default, the p command results in duplicated lines (all lines printed twice).
In my fix:
I used s??? instead of s/// because this way I didn't need to escape all the / in the patterns, so it's a bit more readable this way
I used two expressions with the -e flag:
s?.*://?? matches everything up until :// and replaces it with nothing
s?/.*?? matches everything from / until the end replaces it with nothing
The two expressions are executed in the given order
In modern versions of sed you can omit -e and separate the two expressions with ;. I stick to using -e because it's more portable.