find which lines in a file are longer than N characters

sed -n "/^.\{73,\}/p" < /path/to/file

Filter out lines of input that contain 72, or fewer, characters. "sed -n" : don't print lines by default "/^.\{73,\}/" : find lines that start with 73 (or more) characters "p" : print them

Sample Output

$ ls /etc | sed -n "/^.\{73,\}/p"
-rw-r--r--.  1 root     root       4646 Mar  5 13:05 DIR_COLORS.lightbgcolor
-rw-r--r--.  1 root     root        863 Sep  2  2013 dleyna-renderer-service.conf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root     root        371 Mar  8 22:57 libguestfs-tools.conf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root     root       5122 Dec 24 06:57 makedumpfile.conf.sample

By: flatcap

2014-03-20 12:31:57

sed sed file line length

6 Alternatives + Submit Alt

Identify long lines in a file

This command displays a list of lines that are longer than 72 characters. I use this command to identify those lines in my scripts and cut them short the way I like it.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
16

awk 'length>72' file

haivu · 2009-09-10 05:54:41 27
sort lines by length
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

perl -lne '$l{$_}=length;END{for(sort{$l{$a}<=>$l{$b}}keys %l){print}}' < /usr/share/dict/words | tail

grokskookum · 2009-09-10 14:49:03 3
sort lines by length
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

awk '{print length, $0;}' | sort -nr

ashawley · 2009-10-07 16:32:27 4
sort lines by length

making it "sound" more "natural" language like -- additionally sorting the longest words alphabetically: this approach is using: * to get at all lines of input * post-"for" structure * short-circuit-or in sort: if the lengths are the same, then sort alphabetically otherwise don't even evaluate the right hand side of the or * -C sets all input and ouput channels to utf8
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

perl -C -e 'print for sort { length $a <=> length $b or $a cmp $b } <>' < /usr/share/dict/words | tail

dbr · 2011-10-20 01:43:25 7
find which lines in a file are longer than N characters

Filter out lines of input that contain 72, or fewer, characters. This uses bash only. ${#i} is the number of characters in variable i. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ ls /etc | while read i; do [ ${#i} -gt 72 ] && echo "$i"; done
-rw-r--r--.  1 root     root       4646 Mar  5 13:05 DIR_COLORS.lightbgcolor
-rw-r--r--.  1 root     root        863 Sep  2  2013 dleyna-renderer-service.conf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root     root        371 Mar  8 22:57 libguestfs-tools.conf
-rw-r--r--.  1 root     root       5122 Dec 24 06:57 makedumpfile.conf.sample
```
1

while read i; do [ ${#i} -gt 72 ] && echo "$i"; done < /path/to/file

flatcap · 2014-03-20 12:27:06 7

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yeneba6574 · 15 weeks ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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