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In-place batch file manipulation
Delete the same line in many files
Let’s start by creating a simple text file with three lines. This is what it looks like:
echo "Hello\nto the\nworld" > test.txt
cat test.txt
Hello
to the
world
We use sed to remove lines in the file matching some regex. The -i.bak option ensures the file is modified in place.
sed -i.bak '/to the/d' test.txt
cat test.txt
Hello
world
We get the file with the removed line in place of our original file. The same principle applies to several files and this allows batching.