Writing a BASH command to print a range

Asked Jan 20 '21 at 16:39

Active Jan 20 '21 at 16:53

Viewed 18 times

Sample data (foo)

line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
line 5
line 6

To get the desired lines hardcoded I have used

sed -n '1,3p' foo

Which returns to expected outcome

line 1
line 2
line 3

Now I need to a script where the range1, range2 & file-name are taken as command-line arguments. So i tried

#!/bin/bash

sed -n '$1,$2p'

When running the scripting using

sh print_lines.sh 2 4 foo

I get the following error

sed: -e expression #1, char 2: unknown command: `1'

Any ideas? Thanks

edited Jan 20 '21 at 16:53

asked Jan 20 '21 at 16:39

Tegz

1

Try `sed -n "$1,${2}p" "$3"` – MichalH Jan 20 '21 at 16:41
To expand the parameters, you need to put them in double quotes – Raman Sailopal Jan 20 '21 at 16:42
And putting `#!/bin/bash` in the script but then invoking it with `sh` makes little sense. – tink Jan 20 '21 at 16:44
Great issue solved! Thanks alot – Tegz Jan 20 '21 at 16:54

0 Answers0