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I have a large log file that contains numerous lines of the same entry, lets call it "repeat-info". As an example here is what a portion of the log might look like:

[Timestamp] repeat-info
[Timestamp] repeat-info
[Timestamp] Log information 1
[Timestamp] Log information 2
[Timestamp] repeat-info
[Timestamp] Log information 3
[Timestamp] repeat-info

Is there a command that can output the information in the log file and exclude the repeated information? It becomes a hassle if I have to use more file.log and sift through all the repeating information to find what it is I want to look at.

I am reading through the man pages for sed and awk as I saw those appear in searches for my question, however I haven't found anything conclusive that would do what I need.

I was searching through the older questions and found this question which is related to mine.

I was looking for a way to do this with a single command, or two piped together, without having to create a script.

Any help is appreciated!

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    I'm not entirely sure what you are asking. Is it just a simple grep -v or is it something more?
    – jw013
    May 10, 2012 at 15:43

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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There are a few ways to do this. Best would be grep:

grep -v 'repeat-info' file.log

Other ways:

sed '/repeat-info/d' file.log
sed -n '/repeat-info/!p' file.log

awk '!/repeat-info/' file.log
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  • I would add perl -ni -e 'print unless /repeat-info/' file.log
    – tmow
    May 10, 2012 at 16:28
  • @Kevin Thank you for the help! I was not aware one of the options for grep was to inverse the command.
    – SirCobalt
    May 10, 2012 at 17:00
  • @Kevin Is there a way to use this same thing and exclude two different lines of information? (Eg. exclude two sets of repeated information from the same log file. Such as grep -v 'repeat-info' && 'more-repeated-info' file.log).
    – SirCobalt
    May 10, 2012 at 17:08
  • @SirCobalt yes, you can use -e to specify more than one pattern, e.g. grep -v -e 'repeat-info' -e 'more-repeat' file.log
    – Kevin
    May 10, 2012 at 17:11

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