Re: delete last line

On Fri, Jan 11, 2008, Jean-Pierre Radley wrote:
Jeff Hyman typed (on Fri, Jan 11, 2008 at 11:20:40AM -0500):
| Jean-Pierre Radley typed (on Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 05:55:06PM -0500):
| | pablo typed (on Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 02:03:03PM -0800):
| | | how can I delete the last line of a text file from the command line ?
| | |
| | | I mean only last line
| |
| | sed '$d' in.file > out.file
| |
| | --
| | JP
|
| Well... now I'm curious.
|
| How would you delete ONLY the next-to-last line,
| leaving the previous very last line to replace
| the space where the next-to-last line was just
| removed?

Badly phrased question. If you remove a line, there is no "space left
behind". There would only be a "space left behind" if you deleted the
just the line's visible contents, AKA as blanking the line. When one
says remove, one means removing the 'newline' as well, so that there's
nothing left at all.

In any case, what you meant to do would want a small modification to what
Bill just posted:


ex - filename <<DONE
$
-
w
q
DONE

Or more easily:

ex - filename <<DONE
$-1d
w
q
DONE

To delete 10 lines prior to the last line, leaving the last line:

ex - filename <<DONE
$-11,$-1d
w
q
DONE

Bill
--
INTERNET: bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/ PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX: (206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

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have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies
are legalized." -- Lysander Spooner, Letter to Grover Cleveland 1886
.

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