delete strings from file bash

Question

I have a file with tons of call logs and I am trying to clean it up using bash. I figured out how to search for a string and delete the entire line it is on but that isn't what I want to accomplish.

I want to search for a string as an example:

There are tons of MAC address in the file and I want to remove them all MAC:00-0A-DD-84-01-33
There is also a call ID at the beginning of each line that looks like: 354469805 or 354469894 and I want to remove all of those as well.

I'm just starting in bash so please excuse my ignorance. I am entering 2 lines of the call log below for clarification. I want to delete the 3544 number, the MAC address, and the word Telepacific.

354469725   06/24/2013  09:34   00:03:26    Chante Squires      105 TelePacific     MAC:00-0A-DD-84-01-1D   TelePacific                 17025290701 1   
354469732   06/24/2013  09:59   00:01:16    Chante Squires      105 TelePacific     MAC:00-0A-DD-84-01-1D   TelePacific                 12132238375 1

I tried sed -i '/"Telepacific"/d' Nichole24-25 > Nichole but got.. sed: 1: "Nichole24-25": extra characters at the end of N command — Fr0ntSight
– Fr0ntSight, Commented Jun 27, 2013 at 19:09

Greg · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-27 18:48:09Z

1

You could use sed:

sed -i 's/^[0-9]\{9\}\|MAC:[0-9A-Fa-f]\{2\}\([-\:][0-9A-Fa-f]\{2\}\)\{5\}//g' input.log

Between the 's/ and //g' is a regular expression that matches the removal criteria in your question. The s flag in front means "search and replace" the regular expression. The // means replace the regular expression with nothing. The g flag at the end means "replace all matches" if they occur more than once in a line. Finally, the -i switch means "edit the files in-place".

This solution assumes that your call IDs are all 9 digits and that the MAC address has six groups of two hexadecimal digits separated by dashes or colons.

edited Jun 27, 2013 at 18:48

answered Jun 27, 2013 at 18:28

Greg

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jaypal singh · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-27 20:11:25Z

1

One way with awk (you will loose extra tabs space, every field will be separated by single space):

awk '{for(i=2;i<NF;i++) if(8>i || i>10) printf "%s ", $i; print $NF}' log

answered Jun 27, 2013 at 20:11

jaypal singh

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