How can I delete words from each line of a file using sed in shell script?

Question

For e.g. I want to delete the second and the fourth word of each line

Before sample.txt:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. 
Nulla elit dui, fermentum sed quam sed, semper auctor elit.

After sample.txt:

Lorem dolor amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Nulla dui, sed quam sed, semper auctor elit.

I resolved with 'cut', but I must you 'sed', which I do not know how to use well. — Fogarasi Norbert, Apr 10 '17 at 18:06

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 10 '17 at 17:39

1

Something like:

sed 's/\(\S\+\s\+\)\S\+\s\+\(\S\+\s\+\)\S\+\s\+\(.*\)/\1\2\3/g'

should work, if you must use sed. This script does not work if you have fewer than 4 words in the line.

answered Apr 10 '17 at 17:39

OmnipotentEntity

Thank you, this is what I was looking for. I could resolve with 'cut' but I must use 'sed' unfortunately. – Fogarasi Norbert Apr 10 '17 at 18:02

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 10 '17 at 17:45

0

You can do this with "cut"

cut -d ' ' -f1,3,5- MY_FILE

The -d sets the delimiter to space and the -f chooses fields 1, 3 and 5+.

edited Apr 10 '17 at 17:45

tripleee

answered Apr 10 '17 at 17:38

Lukas Biewald

I must use 'sed', but thanks anyway, this works fine. – Fogarasi Norbert Apr 10 '17 at 18:03

2 Answers2