Remove duplicate string in multiple lines

Question

Okay, so I have a big ol' beat finder label output from Audacity that looks like this:

25.651000            25.651000
25.666000            25.666000
25.685000            25.685000
25.718000            25.718000
25.737000            25.737000
26.244000            26.244000
27.050425            27.052000
27.853000            27.853000
27.867000            27.867000
28.674000            28.674000

However, as you can see Audacity decided to duplicate the first column twice. However, I don't want that second column. Is there anyway to delete that second column leaving me with something like this?

There are about 186 lines.

Do you have one space before your data, or does value starts from beginning of line? — Jotne, Jan 15 '15 at 19:28
Sorry, no space accidentally added that in formatting everything. Fixed. — ArchBlox, Jan 15 '15 at 19:29
Don't forget to accept the answer that you feel best solved your problem so that future visitors know. — AlG, Jan 20 '15 at 11:52

AlG · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-15T19:29:20.170

4

This should do it for you;

cut -f 1 -d ' ' MyFile.txt

Results in:

edited Jan 15 '15 at 19:29

answered Jan 15 '15 at 19:21

AlG

14,697
4
41
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1

You should not use `cat` with programs that can read data itself. It slows things down, uses more resources, loss of functionality. So `cut -f 1 -d ' ' MyFile.txt`. You code does not produce output you have from above data, just blank lines, since OP has space before his data in example above. – Jotne Jan 15 '15 at 19:25
@Jotne updated per your comments. Even though OP said he was good. :) – AlG Jan 15 '15 at 19:29

Jotne · Answer 2 · 2015-01-16T13:48:42.903

3

This should do:

awk '$0=$1' MyFile.txt
25.651000
25.666000
25.685000
25.718000
25.737000
26.244000
27.050425
27.853000
27.867000
28.674000

This is more secure, se Eds comment.

awk '{print $1}' MyFile.txt

edited Jan 16 '15 at 13:48

answered Jan 15 '15 at 19:26

Jotne

40,548
12
51
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That first one will fail if $1 evaluates numerically to zero (e.g. `00.000000`). – Ed Morton Jan 16 '15 at 12:49

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 15 '15 at 20:33

2

With GNU grep:

grep -oP ' \K[^ ]+' file

Output:

answered Jan 15 '15 at 20:33

Cyrus

84,225
14
89
153

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 16 '15 at 06:49

2

sed 's/ .*//' YourFile

remove anything since first space until the end

answered Jan 16 '15 at 06:49

NeronLeVelu

9,908
1
23
43

midori · Answer 5 · 2015-01-16T06:51:37.217

1

There is sed for you:

sed 's/\(^.*\) .*$/\1/' file

edited Jan 16 '15 at 06:51

answered Jan 15 '15 at 22:33

midori

4,807
5
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move the space char outside the group, it is not part of the value – NeronLeVelu Jan 16 '15 at 06:50
right, it ask to remove the duplicate, not to have a single clean value. You got the point – NeronLeVelu Jan 16 '15 at 06:58

Remove duplicate string in multiple lines

5 Answers5