Delete last two lines

[parmy_4]

Hi,
I have a file in which I don't need the last two lines. How can run a command to achieve this?

I have a work around for my collegue but he is not happy with it.

sed '$d' my_file | sed '$d'

I am expecting some thing like

sed -e '$d' -e '$d' my_file.

Please help us.
Parmy

[Pete Randall]

Parmy,

Use "sed -e '$d' my_file |sed -e '$d'"

that should do it.


Pete

[harry d brown jr]

vi my_file<
live free or die
harry

[Jean-Luc Oudart]

with vi cmd
vi +$ my_file<
Regards
Jean-Luc

[harry d brown jr]

Another way:

expr `wc -l my_file | cut -d" " -f1` - 2 | xargs echo | sed -e "s/^/head -/" -e "s/$/ my_file/" | sh > new_my_file

live free or die
harry

[john korterman · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I think this works (at least it seems so on my screen):

# tail -2 | comm -23 -

regards,
John K.

[Jean-Luc Oudart]

awk solution :
awk -v nb=$(wc -l my_file | cut -f1 -d" ") '{if(NR>(nb - 2)) exit; print}' my_file

Regards,
Jean-Luc

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

A possible solution:

head $(wc -l my_file | awk '{print "-" $1 - 2}') my_file

In vi you can use the command:
$-1,$d
to delete the last two lines. Should work in ed too.

Or a complete awk solution:
awk '{ if (NR > 2) { print prev2 } prev2=prev1;prev1=$0}' < my_file

[Bharat Katkar]

Hi
This works ..but don't know you like it or not.

# let A=`cat file1 | wc -l`-2
# head -$A file1 >file2

That works.
Regards,

[Jan Sladky]

hi Parmy,

I have no HP-UX where to try it but on Linux
exists the tac command (opposit to cat)

so maybe the following row will help you

tac file | sed '1,2d' | tac | tee file1


br Jan