Tips For Processing Large Files

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Tips for Processing Large Files

Extract the First 100 Lines

head -n 100 filename.txt > smallfile.txt

Extract the Last 100 Lines

tail -n 100 filename.txt > smallfile.txt

Extract Lines 100 to 200 (even of multi-GB files!)

sed -n '100,200p;200q' filename.txt > smallfile.txt

Extract the First 100 Lines That Match Text

grep -m 100 'text_to_search' filename.txt > smallfile.txt

Redirect StdOut to Vim

Instead of echo text > smallfile.txt, you can avoid the temporary file and go right to vim with:

echo text | vim -