Awk command to print all the lines except the last three lines

Posted by Avinash Raj on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by Avinash Raj
Published on 2014-06-02T11:28:45Z Indexed on 2014/06/02 15:59 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 463

Filed under:

command-line

|

awk

I want to print all the lines except the last three lines from the input through awk only. Please note that my file contains n number of lines.

For example,

file.txt contains,

foo
bar
foobar
barfoo
last
line

I want the output to be,

foo
bar
foobar

I know it could be possible through the combination of tac and sed or tac and awk

$ tac file | sed '1,3d' | tac
foo
bar
foobar

$ tac file | awk 'NR==1{next}NR==2{next}NR==3{next}1' | tac
foo
bar
foobar

But i want the output through awk only.

© Ask Ubuntu or respective owner

Related posts about command-line

WMI permissions: Select CommandLine, ProcessId FROM Win32_Process returns no data for CommandLine

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi all, I am gathering performance data via WMI and would like to avoid having to use an account in the Administrators group for this purpose. The target machine is running Windows Server 2003 with the latest SP/updates. I've done what I believe to be the appropriate configuration to allow our user… >>> More
WMI permissions: Select CommandLine, ProcessId FROM Win32_Process returns no data for CommandLine

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am gathering performance data via WMI and would like to avoid having to use an account in the Administrators group for this purpose. The target machine is running Windows Server 2003 with the latest SP/updates. I've done what I believe to be the appropriate configuration to allow our user access… >>> More
Java 1.5 Command Line Password Masking

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
All, Our server is running Java 1.5 and I am having difficulty trying to mask user input from the command line. I am executing a jar file (java -jar my.jar) and am working through command line prompts via printlns. I cannot use Java Console. Thanks >>> More
Modifying AD Schema permissions from the command line

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
Recently while making some changes for a client, I accidently dug myself into a pretty deep hole. I was trying to explicitly deny a certain user from reading a few group policies including the Default Domain Policy. When I went in to make the change I accidently denied Authenticated Users rather… >>> More
Ask the Readers: Do You Use the Command Line?

as seen on How to geek - Search for 'How to geek'
Most people have heard of it but not everyone is familiar or comfortable with how to use this bastion of geekdom. This week we would like to know if you use the command line or not. The command line…the bastion of ultimate geekery in many peoples’ eyes. You often hear people referring to doing… >>> More

Related posts about awk

problem with awk script

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, when I call my awk script, I keep getting an error : sam@sam-laptop:~/shell/td4$ awk -f agenda.awk -- -n Robert agenda.txt awk: agenda.awk:6: printf "Hello" awk: agenda.awk:6: ^ syntax error the script contains this : #!/usr/bin/awk BEGIN { } printf "Hello" END { } Thank you >>> More
Awk to grab colo(u)r codes from CSS files aka School me in Awk

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Nice and (hopefully) easy. I am trying to work out how to grab the variable #XXX from a text file (css file) containing strings like hr { margin: 18px 0 17px; border-color: #ccc; } h1 a:hover, h2 a:hover, h3 a:hover { color: #001100; } Which I would like to return as ccc 777 The… >>> More
Parsing the output of "uptime" with bash

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I would like to save the output of the uptime command into a csv file in a Bash script. Since the uptime command has different output formats based on the time since the last reboot I came up with a pretty heavy solution based on case, but there is surely a more elegant way of doing this. uptime… >>> More
AWK scripting :How to remove Field separator using awk

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Need the following output ONGC044 ONGC043 ONGC042 ONGC041 ONGC046 ONGC047 from this input Medium Label Medium ID Free Blocks =============================================================================== [ONGC044] ECCPRDDB_FS_43 ac100076:4aed9b39:44f0:0001… >>> More
sort associative array in awk - help?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi all, I have an associative array in awk that gets populated like this... chr_count[$3]++ When I try to print my chr_counts I use this: for (i in chr_count) { print i,":",chr_count[i]; } But not surprisingly, the order of i is not sorted in any way. Is there an easy way to iterate over… >>> More