[CJ1985]

I am just learning how to work in Linux, and I am getting frustrated. I'm trying to figure out what I need to do in order to be able to have a previous file that is a text file, which has 10 lines of text to do the following:

I need to be able to take the first 5 lines of the text file and move them to the bottom so that the bottom 5 lines of text are at the top and then save the file.

I figured using the head -n 5 and tail -n 5 command would work, but it is not doing what I need it to do.

I hope this makes sense? I know how to create a text file, or at least I thought I did.

Creating a text file, you would do the whole cat > myfile as an example, press enter and then start typing a note for an example. Once I'm done press enter and then ctrl+d to exit, and then to view the file I would go cat myfile which would bring it up and that does work. But if I want to take the first 5 lines of that file and move it to the bottom, and have the bottom 5 lines of that file to the top all in one file and name it a different file, wouldn't I need to use the head and tail command as mentioned above?

PLEASE HELP!! lol

I hope what I have said makes any sense at all. HA HA

[CJ1985]

I got help with this, however... I am wondering, is there anyone here who knows or uses Linux? I am so confused and lost with this, I am trying to learn it because I am in a class in college trying to learn Linux and it is not easy stuff! It's all gibberish to me. Help me! lol

No but seriously, help!!

[dudeking]

To be honest I don't quite understand what you're looking to do.. id take a look at a few perl tutorials for linux command line. But if its just to find and replace this will do it.

$ perl -pi -e "s/hello/goodbye/g;" filename [RET]

This would change every occurrence of hello to goodbye in the file called filename


... any help?

[wladicus]

In which text editor are you trying to do this: Kate, Nano, vi ... ?
I work with Linux on and off.
As I understand it the head and tail commands only list or display the number of lines you specify either from the top or from the bottom of the file.
If you want to change something in a file there are 2 ways to do it.
The easy way is to use a text editor to open the file, look at the contents and use the text editor commands to make the desired changes. vi comes as a standard text editor in Linux, and some others are Kate, Kwrite,nano,and joe. I have used vi, Kwrite, Kate and nano.
The other way to alter a text file is via programming. You can write a routine (script file or other programme file) to perform desired functions on a text file. For example you can parse the text file to search and find a particular phrase and then do what you wish with it. You can also move lines to different places in the file. All this sort of programmed manipulation requires some detailed knowledge of file structure and programming skills, and it is probably not what you are looking for at this stage in your study.
So you probably need to use a text editor to make the changes you want. Not too different from using Notepad in Windows or more accurately it is similar to using something like EDIT.com in DOS to edit a text file.
Hope this helped some.
walt

[Mikorist]

You must learn cat, head, tail, to do something like that...
Look:
Text Processing Commands

[wladicus]

Originally Posted by Mikorist

You must learn cat, head, tail, to do something like that...
Look:
Text Processing Commands

Good point Mikorist. Thank you for the link - I have added it to my collection on Linux.