echo lines of file - but no more than N characters per line [duplicate]

Question

I would like to print the tail of a file (could be also head or cat in general) to the screen but restrict the number of characters per line.

So if a file contains ...

abcdefg
abcd
abcde
abcdefgh

... and the maximum number is 5, then the following should be printed:

abcde
abcd
abcde
abcde

How would I do that?

user1700494 · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-09 13:17:12Z

4

tail yourfile |cut -c 1-5
....

answered Aug 9, 2016 at 13:17

user1700494

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2

Note that in the case of current versions of GNU cut, that only works for single-byte characters (it returns only the first 5 bytes of each line). Hopefully, that will be fixed in a future version (some vendors like RedHat I believe have patches for that).
– Stéphane Chazelas
Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 13:45

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the_velour_fog · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-09 13:49:37Z

1

You could try

sed 's/\(.\{5\}\).*/\1/' file.txt

answered Aug 9, 2016 at 13:25

the_velour_fog

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That is more readable with ERE: sed -rn 's/(.{5}).*/\1/p' file.txt
– Law29
Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 13:26

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heemayl · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-09 14:02:40Z

1

So many ways:

grep:

$ tail file.txt | grep -o '^.\{,5\}' 
abcde
abcd
abcde
abcde

sed:

$ tail file.txt | sed 's/^\(.\{,5\}\).*/\1/'
abcde
abcd
abcde
abcde

awk:

$ tail file.txt | awk '{print substr($0,1,5)}'
abcde
abcd
abcde
abcde

answered Aug 9, 2016 at 13:26

heemayl

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3 Answers 3