Unix shell - copy first 300 lines to new file

Question

I've been trying to solve this for days and nothings seems to work.

Copy first 300 lines of a file1 to a new file called file2. This file contains phone number information, already sorted by last name, which is the first field in each record.

 head -300 file1 > file2

should be the answer but it will not accept.

Any and all help appreciated.

`cat -vet file1` Do you see `^M` at the end of each line? then `dos2unix file1` and try again (I'm not sure this is the issue, but a quick test and worth a try). Good luck. — shellter, Mar 27 '15 at 14:46
There is nothing wrong with your command line, unless your implementation of `head` is really restrictive and wants to be `head -n 300` instead. Please include your actual error, so that we can help you understand what's wrong. — ghoti, Apr 16 '15 at 19:56

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 27 '15 at 14:11

3

You could use awk to do this:

awk 'NR<=300' file1 > file2

The real question is "Why isn't head working"... are you getting an error or something?

answered Mar 27 '15 at 14:11

JNevill

46,980
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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 27 '15 at 14:15

1

Try

head -n 300 < file1 > file2

answered Mar 27 '15 at 14:15

AlejandroVD

1,576
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Unix shell - copy first 300 lines to new file

2 Answers2