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Remove last N lines from a text file in Linux

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How can I delete a specific number of lines from the end of a text file using Linux command-line tools?

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1 answer

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Use head to keep all but the last N lines, overwriting the file:

head -n -N input.txt > tmp && mv tmp input.txt

Example: remove last 3 lines

head -n -3 file.txt > tmp && mv tmp file.txt

If you want in-place editing without a temp file. The command

sed -i "$(($(wc -l < file)-22)),\$d" file

is used to delete the last 22 lines from a file named file.

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