I need to delete string from position X to position Y on each line in a text file

Question

I have a huge flat file 100K records each spanning 3000 columns. I need to removed a segment of the data fay starting position 300 to position 500 before archiving. This is sens

Answer 1

Assuming that position means column, you can use cut to select the columns you want.

cut -f 1-299,501-3000 CutMe.txt

If your data is delimited by commas instead of tabs, then use -d.

cut -d, -f 1-299,501-3000 CutMe.txt

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If position means character, you can do the same with cut -c.

cut -c 1-299,501-3000 CutMe.txt