How to remove a text from file/files using grep

However in practice we need to remove some text from a file or from multiple files. Removing text from files manually is a tough task. Here is a sample example to do this:

Create a script

• Create a file like SOME_NAME.sh
• Write following lines of code in that file

for thefile in *.txt ; do
   grep -v "YOUR_TEXT_TO_REMOVE" $thefile > $thefile.$$.tmp
   mv $thefile.$$.tmp $thefile
done

You can use any extension in place of txt according to your requirement.

Explanation

grep -v "YOUR_TEXT_TO_REMOVE" $thefile > $thefile.$$.tmp returns the content of all .txt files in that directory YOUR_TEXT_TO_REMOVE and write that output in a tempfile then replace new file with that original one.

Running script

• To run script just run sh SOME_NAME.sh

Enjoy !!!