Re: How to use sed to remove a line from a cron file and also remove all commented lines directly above it

Thanks, I learned something from that answer. 

However, when I sent the original email, there were no blank lines in the text. 

Those were inserted by something between my Comcast account and the users group. 

I think cron doesn't allow blank lines. 



Also, I am looking to remove the block of commented lines, if any, that are directly 

above the specified pattern.  In the example I gave it begins with "# Purge" but in general 

it could be any commented line (or no line at all). 



----- Original Message -----


From: "Jim Schneider" <[email protected]> 
To: [email protected], [email protected] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 7:49:15 AM 
Subject: RE: How to use sed to remove a line from a cron file and also remove all commented lines directly above it 


In the text below, I want to remove every line from the line beginning with Purge 

through the line containing the pattern $BACKUPDIR/runBackup.sh . 

Any ideas? 



55 10 * * * /opt/company/runThisCommand.sh 

# Purge tables and rebuild database indexes 

# The first five crontab fields are integer patterns that specify the following: 
#     minute (0-59), 
#     hour (0-23), 
#     day of the month (1-31), 
#     month of the year (1-12), 
#     day of the week (0-6 with 0=Sunday). 
45 22 * * * . /etc/profile; . $BACKUPDIR/runBackup.sh 

0 1 * * * /opt/company/runAnotherCmd.sh 
==================================================================== 
I realize I'm cheating here but 
crontab -l | grep -p -v 'Purge tables' > new.crontab 

will do the trick.  The '-p' flag treats blocks of text separated by blank lines as a single unit.  The '-v' flag excludes that block of text. 
After verifying new.crontab, move it into place. 

I realize I'm suggesting unix commands in place of sed and don't intend to offend this group. 

Jim Schneider 

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