Skip is a simple tool useful mostly for bash scripting and command-line operations.
- n: Skip 'n' number of lines, and then output the rest
- +n: Do NOT Skip 'n' number of lines. Means specifically to output them.
- blank: Skip any blank lines.
- header: Skip any lines at the start of the stream until a blank line is determined, and then will output the rest
- before "string": Skip any lines until the specified "string" is matched at the beginning of a line, then will output the rest (including line that matched unless 1 is the next parameter)
- until "string": Once the string is identified (at the begining of a line)
- all: Skip everything after this point.
NOTE:
It does not replace or include anything that grep can already do. For example, skipping any lines that match a regex pattern, should be done by grep. The main purpose is to provide functionality that grep is unable to do.
Examples:
# This will output somefile.txt but skip the first line
cat somefile.txt | skip
# This will output somefile.txt but skip the first 3 lines
cat somefile.txt | skip 3
# This will output somefile.txt but will not output any blank lines.
cat somefile.txt | skip blank
# This will output somefile.txt but will ignore all the lines at the start until an empty
# line is encountered, and then will output the rest.
cat somefile.txt | skip header
# This will output somefile.txt but will ignore all lines until it encounters a line that
# begins with "Data:" (and will output that "Data:" line)
cat somefile.txt | skip before "Data:"
# This will output somefile.txt but will ignore all lines until it encounters a line that
# begins with "Data:" (and will not output that "Data:" line)
cat somefile.txt | skip before "Data:" 1
# This will output somefile.txt but will ignore all lines until it encounters a line that
# begins with "Data:", will not remove the 'Data:' line, but will remove the next line.
cat somefile.txt | skip before "Data:" 0 1
# This will output somefile.txt and will output all lines until it encounters a line that
# begins with "Data:".
cat somefile.txt | skip after "Data:"
# This will output somefile.txt but will ignore all lines until it encounters a line that
# begins with "Data:", will not remove the 'Data:' line and will output lines until it
# finds another line named 'End:'
cat somefile.txt | skip before "Data:" after "End:"
# This is a slightly odd one, and can be done by some other tools anyway.. but adding for some convenience.
# 'all' will skip everything after that point. In this example, we are skipping 3 lines, displaying 4 lines, and
# then skipping everything after that.
cat somefile.txt | skip 3 +4 all
It should be noted that the order of the command options matter. They are taken into account, in the order that they are specified.
Examples:
# This will skip all blank lines, skip 3 remaining lines, and then output the rest
cat somefile.txt | skip blank 3
# This will skip the first 3 lines (whether they contain any blank ones or not), and then
# output the rest except any blank lines
cat somefile.txt | skip 3 blank
# This will display the first 4 lines, skip 2 lines, display 3 lines, and then skip everything after that.
cat somefile.txt | skip +4 2 +3 all
# This will skip all lines until it reaches one that matches 'Data:'. By default it would
# also output 'Data:' but in this case, it is being informed to skip that line.
cat somefile.txt | skip before 'Data:' 1