Print Selected Lines in Shell

Let's assume you want to print certain lines in given text. For example, consider

$ cat some_file

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Let's say you want to print lines 3-5. This is very easy using sed:

$ sed -n '3,5p' some_file

3

4

5

Let's say you want to print all lines, except 3-5. This can be done with d option:

$ sed '3,5d' some_file

1

2

6

7

8

9

Note that by default sed prints all lines, so -n option asks sed to print only 3 to 5 lines and suppresses the default behavior. On the other hand, the d letter in the single quotes asks sed to delete the lines 3-5 from printing by default, so it prints only the rest of the lines instead.