Batch Script - Deleting specific lines from a text file

Question

Suppose there are two files Temp1 & Temp2 containing below data =

Temp1.txt:

xxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
yyyyy yyyy yyy yyyyyyy yyyy yyy
zz zzzzz zz zzzz zzz zzz zz z z

Temp2.txt :

xxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
zz zzzzz zz zzzz zzz zzz zz z z
aaaa aa aaaa aa aaaaa aaa aaaaaa

The requirement is to delete (in Temp1) the lines which are matching with Temp2. And possibly save it in a different file. So, basically the output should be something like this :

Temp.txt :

yyyyy yyyy yyy yyyyyyy yyyy yyy

This is what i have got so far :

@echo off
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
FOR /F "Delims=" %%A IN ('type "Temp2.txt"') DO (
    SET STRING=%%A
    FINDSTR /V /C:%STRING% "Temp1.txt" > Temp.txt
)

But, i think this code will keep the matching data, instead of deleting. Needs correction.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 08 '15 at 15:34

2

you don't even need a script for this. It's a single command:

findstr /x /v /G:temp2.txt temp1.txt >temp.txt

/x compares whole lines

/v prints only lines, that do NOT match

/g uses a file (temp2.txt) to get the searchstrings

answered Apr 08 '15 at 15:34

Stephan

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This ought to work with the addition of the /L switch, but it is unreliable! See [my answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/29520063/1012053) as to why a simple FINDSTR command cannot be used. – dbenham Apr 08 '15 at 16:20

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:24

FINDSTR by itself ought to be a great solution. Reading the documentation, one would think the following literal search should work.

findstr /vlxg:"temp2.txt" "temp1.txt" >temp.txt

But the following FINDSTR bugs and limitations prevent the above from being reliable

Specifying multiple literal search strings can fail to find all matches (bug)
Literal searches may require \ and/or " to be escaped as \\ and \"

The solution is to do a regular expression search instead. But this requires that regular expression meta characters within temp2.txt must be escaped. This is a perfect task for my JREPL.BAT regular expression find/replace utility. JREPL.BAT is a hybrid JScript/batch script that runs natively on any Windows machine from XP onward.

jrepl "[.*^$[\\]" "\$&" /f "temp2.txt"|findstr /rvxg:/ "temp1.txt" >"temp.txt"

The above works as follows.

The JREPL command escapes meta characters within temp2.txt and the output is piped to FINDSTR

The FINDSTR /R option treats all search strings as regular expressions

The /V option causes matching lines to be suppressed, and non matching lines are printed

The /X option means a search string must match the entire line

The /G:/ option instructs FINDSTR to read the search strings from stdin (the pipe)

The JREPL | FINDSTR solution has the following limitations, all due to FINDSTR behavior

All lines in temp2.txt must be <= 511 characters, even after the meta characters have been escaped
All lines in temp1.txt must be terminated by \r\n (carriage return linefeed)
\r must not appear anywhere within temp1.txt other than at the end of a line.

The limitations can be eliminated and the solution is much simpler if you download GNU grep for Windows - a port of the standard unix utility.

grep -x -v -F -f "temp2.txt" "temp1.txt" >"temp.txt"

Batch Script - Deleting specific lines from a text file

2 Answers2