Hi all, I have a text file and I want to clean up the file by only print those lines start with the date. Is there anyway I can do that? Code: [?25h[?4l[?1l[?3h[?3h Wed Jun 1 2005 10:44AM Page 1 SCAD Location Log Recall Report Tue May 31 2005 12:00AM to Tue May 31 2005 11:59PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________ | | | Locations: 656 SCAD FY101 Transactions: Valid Transaction Type: All Reader Status: Online | |___________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________| | | |T| |Reader| | | |M|O|O| | Trans | | Date | Time |P| Location | Name | ID Number | Cardholder Name | Action |N|F|K| Reason |Amount | ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________ |05/31/05|02:55PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000756582 |Perez, Luz Marina |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|02:55PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000756582 |Perez, Luz Marina |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|02:56PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000756582 |Perez, Luz Marina |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|02:59PM|1|FY101 |FY101A| | |No Sale | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|02:59PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000756582 |Perez, Luz Marina |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|03:29PM|1|FY101 |FY101A| | |No Sale | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|05:21PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000668279 |MCNEAL,CORVET J. |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________ Blackboard Inc. End [?3l  Thanks CT

Hi all, I have a text file and I want to clean up the file by only print those lines start with the date. Is there anyway I can do that? [code] [?25h[?4l[?1l[?3h[?3h Wed Jun 1 2005 10:44AM Page 1 SCAD Location Log Recall Report Tue May 31 2005 12:00AM to Tue May 31 2005 11:59PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________ | | | Locations: 656 SCAD FY101 Transactions: Valid Transaction Type: All Reader Status: Online | |___________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________| | | |T| |Reader| | | |M|O|O| | Trans | | Date | Time |P| Location | Name | ID Number | Cardholder Name | Action |N|F|K| Reason |Amount | ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________ |05/31/05|02:55PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000756582 |Perez, Luz Marina |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|02:55PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000756582 |Perez, Luz Marina |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|02:56PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000756582 |Perez, Luz Marina |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|02:59PM|1|FY101 |FY101A| | |No Sale | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|02:59PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000756582 |Perez, Luz Marina |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|03:29PM|1|FY101 |FY101A| | |No Sale | | |Y| | | |05/31/05|05:21PM|1|FY101 |FY101A|000668279 |MCNEAL,CORVET J. |SUMMER VALIDATIONS | | |Y| | | ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________ Blackboard Inc. End [?3l  [/code] Thanks CT

Hi, You can use the syntax as given below: cat <full_path_of_file> | egrep -i 'Sun|Mon|Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri|Sat' You can also redirect the output the contents to a new log file using the > as redirection. cat <full_path_of_file> | egrep -i 'Sun|Mon|Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri|Sat' > <newfile> Hope it helps, Rajesh

Rajesh, In the text file i pasted above, I only need those lines start with |05/31/2005 to be printed. The data will be update periodically, so the date will change too. Thanks CT

You can grep for lines that begin with a specific pattern such as: grep '^|[01][0-9]/[0123][0-9]/[01][0-9]|' That greps for dates through year 19.

You can use the same regex patterns in sed. sed -n '/^|[0-1][0-9]\/[0-3][0-9]\/[0-9][0-9]/p' infile > outfile