Retrieving a particular line from a file

[Chern Jian Leaw]

Hi,

Is there a UNIX utility which allows me to retrieve/display a particular line from a file?

I'm trying to retrieve the 2nd line from a text file which consists of several other lines as in:
ken_lee
plnge12
7219
200
Ken Lee
/home/cs/pub
/bin/tcsh

I had tried using `head -2 myFile` but it displayed both lines 1 and 2 of the file "myFile".

I have another method by using PERL to read in the contents of the file into an array an output the proper elements i.e:

#!/usr/intel/bin/perl
open(INPUTFILE, "myFile");
@myArray = ;
close(INPUTFILE);
$passwd = $myArray[1];
print "\$passwd = $passwd \n";

However, I was wondering if there are any other methods to solving this problem?

Note that there are many other files of this form having entirely different entries. Therefore, I need a way to obtain the 2nd line in the file, or even better, be able to specify any line number and display the contents at that line number.

Could anyone please help me out?

Thanks

[Yogeeraj_1 · Accepted solution]

hi,

try to pipe it through a "tail -1". This should do the trick!
head -2 |tail -1


E.g.
K250: home/yd>head -2 /etc/passwd
root:EGVtdOx8xnUI.:0:3::/:/sbin/sh
daemon:*:1:5::/:/sbin/sh
K250: home/yd>head -2 /etc/passwd|tail -1
daemon:*:1:5::/:/sbin/sh
K250: app/cmtpay>


Hope this helps!
Regards
Yogeeraj

[Tom Geudens]

Hi,
Try piping it through an awk. Example
cat /etc/copyright | awk '(NR == 2)'

Regards,
Tom

[Jean-Louis Phelix]

hi,

Another simple way to do it is awk ...

# awk 'NR == 3' file

will print third line of file

Regards.

[Systeemingenieurs Infoc]

i normally use the head/tail. An alternative to get the third line :

nl yourfile|grep "^ *3 *"

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

You can use this simple and silly script. Call it getline.ksh

#!/usr/bin/ksh
if [ $# -ne 2 ]
then
echo "Usage: $0 filename line_number"
exit
fi
FILE=$1
LINE=$2
head -${LINE} ${FILE} |tail -1


$./getline.ksh /etc/services 14

Will print 14th line of /etc/inetd.conf.

-Sri

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

X=5
Y=7

sed -n -e ${X},${Y}p file

[Sean OB_1]

How about:

head -2 filename | tail -1

[John Meissner]

easier than everyone else's....
try this

sed -n "2p" filename

sed -n followed by the number of the line you want and "p" to indicate you want to print to stdout

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Since you already tried perl, here's some perl examples:

Show line 23
# perl -ne'23..23 and print' file

show lines 432 through 5546
# perl -ne'432..5546 and print' file

show from line 2 upto and including a line with "foo"
# perl -ne'2../foo/ and print' file

show line containing foo and the next line
# perl -ne'/foo/ or next; print $_,scalar<>;last' file

[harry d brown jr]

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