how to choose between two lines number in linux command line

Question

I have a large file containing 400K rows.

I have to select rows between 45,000 to 50,000.

I know I can write a have program and keep counting the rows and then select the lines between the interval.

However, would love to know is there a way from doing in command line in the shell?

Both sed and awk have simple commands to pick a range of lines. `awk 'NR > 50000 { exit } NR >= 45000' does it, and avoids reading the last 350000 records too. — Paul_Pedant, Jun 10 '20 at 22:26

Gilles Quénot · Answer 1 · 2020-06-10T22:40:32.940

1

Like this:

awk '
    NR>=45000 && NR<=50000
    NR>50000{exit}
' file

You can even pass variables to awk:

awk -v min=45000 -v max=50000 '
    NR >= min && NR <= max
    NR >  max{exit}
' file

edited Jun 10 '20 at 22:40

answered Jun 10 '20 at 22:21

Gilles Quénot

1

You can avoid reading the last 350,000 rows with an exit. – Paul_Pedant Jun 10 '20 at 22:27
Should be fixed now – Gilles Quénot Jun 10 '20 at 22:44

1 Answers1