John Bartley K7AAY wrote:
> > > l=$(( $(wc -l < sourcefile.txt) / 4 ))
> > > sed --in-place "1,${l}d" sourcefile.txt
> On May 1, 4:13 pm, John Bartley K7AAY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> rebutted:
>
> > Dangit, those don't work as you expected with XP and GNUwin32
XP! Sorry. I didn't see that in your subject line. I would have
suggested something different then. But actually I don't know how to
do it on MS and so will need to defer to others. Sorry.
> > echo $(( $(wc -l < sourcefile.txt) / 4 ))
> > The system cannot find the file specified.
That is POSIX shell syntax. If you have bash or ksh installed it can
do it from the command line. I am using single quotes '...' here but
you will need to figure out how to convert them to double quotes for
XP. I can't use double quotes in the shell because the $vars would be
expanded too soon.
sh -c 'echo $(( $(wc -l < sourcefile.txt) / 4 ))'
And therefore perhaps something like this long one-liner.
sh -c 'sed --in-place "1,$(( $(wc -l < sourcefile.txt) / 4 ))d"
sourcefile.txt'
But if you don't have a POSIX standard shell available (e.g. bash or
ksh or ash or dash or posh or other) then it won't work.
> > l=$(( $(wc -l < sourcefile.txt) / 4 ))
> > The system cannot find the file specified.
Darn command.com! Blech!
> > sed --in-place "1,${l}d" sourcefile.txt
> > sed: -e expression #1, char 7: extra characters after command
>
> And, OBTW, this works when I stuff the numeric value of $1 into the
> second line... but I can't seem to pass the value into that second
> line. Ideas?
Sorry. I don't know XP well enough to suggest a solution.
Good luck!
Bob
