<p>How can I delete all of the lines in a file which contain more than a given number of letters? E.g.</p> <pre class="prettyprint"><code>bear rabbit tree elephant </code></pre> <p>If I restrict it to words of 5 letters or less, the output would be:</p> <pre class="prettyprint"><code>bear tree </code></pre> <ul> <li>The file contains various foreign characters, each of these should count as one letter.</li> <li>Punctuation symbols also can count as one letter.</li> </ul>

<pre class="prettyprint"><code>$ awk 'length<=5' input.txt bear tree </code></pre>

How to delete all lines containing more than a certain number of letters?

How can I delete all of the lines in a file which contain more than a given number of letters? E.g.

bear
rabbit
tree
elephant

If I restrict it to words of 5 letters or less, the output would be:

bear
tree

The file contains various foreign characters, each of these should count as one letter.
Punctuation symbols also can count as one letter.

757

asked Nov 27 '22 06:11

$ awk 'length<=5' input.txt
bear
tree

167

answered Dec 23 '22 09:12

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