Delete certain lines in a txt file via a batch file
I have a generated txt file. This file has certain lines that are superfluous, and need to be removed. Each line that requires removal has one of two string in the line; "ERROR" or "REFERENCE". These tokens may appear anywhere in the line. I would like to delete these lines, while retaining all other lines.
So, if the txt file looks like this:
Good Line of data bad line of C:\Directory\ERROR\myFile.dll Another good line of data bad line: REFERENCE Good line
I would like the file to end up like this:
Good Line of data Another good line of data Good line
TIA.
Use the following:
type file.txt | findstr /v ERROR | findstr /v REFERENCE
This has the advantage of using standard tools in the Windows OS, rather than having to find and install sed/awk/perl and such.
See the following transcript for it in operation:
C:\>type file.txt Good Line of data bad line of C:\Directory\ERROR\myFile.dll Another good line of data bad line: REFERENCE Good line C:\>type file.txt | findstr /v ERROR | findstr /v REFERENCE Good Line of data Another good line of data Good line
You can accomplish the same solution as @paxdiablo's using just findstr by itself. There's no need to pipe multiple commands together:
findstr /V "ERROR REFERENCE" infile.txt > outfile.txt
Details of how this works:
- /v finds lines that don't match the search string (same switch @paxdiablo uses)
- if the search string is in quotes, it performs an OR search, using each word (separator is a space)
- findstr can take an input file, you don't need to feed it the text using the "type" command
- "> outfile.txt" will send the results to the file outfile.txt instead printing them to your console. (Note that it will overwrite the file if it exists. Use ">> outfile.txt" instead if you want to append.)
- You might also consider adding the /i switch to do a case-insensitive match.
If you have sed:
sed -e '/REFERENCE/d' -e '/ERROR/d' [FILENAME]
Where FILENAME is the name of the text file with the good & bad lines