[PLUG] How to pull out a particular line from a textfile

[Colin Kuskie]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 02:36:01PM -0700, Matt Alexander wrote:
> I've got a file and I want to write a script to pull out particular lines
> and save them in variables.  Line 1 is always the email address and Line 2
> is always the subject, for example.
> 
> #!/bin/bash
> 
> EMAIL=`some magical way to pull out line 1 from a textfile`
> SUBJECT=`some magical way to pull out line 2 from a textfile`
> 
> 
> I assume there's a simple command to pull out a particular line from a
> textfile, but I can't think of anything right now.

I usually use perl:

perl -ne 'print if $. == 1' textfile

where $. is the current line number.

You can also use combinations of head and tail:

First line:

  head -1

Second line:

  head -2 | tail -1

Colin