Print duplicate entries in a file using linux commands

Question

I have a file called foo.txt, which consists of:

abc
zaa
asd
dess
zaa
abc
aaa
zaa

I want the output to be stored in another file as:

this text abc appears 2 times
this text zaa appears 3 times

I have tried the following command, but this just writes duplicate entries and their number.

sort foo.txt | uniq --count --repeated > sample.txt

Example of output of above command:

abc 2
zaa 3

How do I add the line "this text appears x times" ?

Taywee · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-24 17:39:02Z

2

Awk is your friend:

sort foo.txt | uniq --count --repeated | awk '{print($2" appears "$1" times")}'

answered Jun 24, 2016 at 17:39

Taywee

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1 Comment

Thanku !!Worked well