copy lines containing word from one file to another file in linux

Question

I want to copy lines containing certain words from file1 to file2.

Suppose file1:

ram 100 ct 50
gopal 200 bc 40
ra         


        

Answer 1

egrep -n '\bct\b' file1 > file2

By the way, grep -n selects lines together with line numbers. If that's not your intention then grep ct file1 > file2 would suffice.

Answer 2

I know I'm late, but just wanted to add that you can do this in vim. Create a copy of the file, then run

:g!/pattern/d

(delete all lines not having the pattern)

so,

:g!/^\w+ \d+ ct \d+/      \\ view the lines
:g!/^\w+ \d+ ct \d+/d     \\ delete lines

More commands can be found here.

Answer 3

This awk should do

awk '/ct/' file1 > file2

If position is important

awk '$3=="ct"' file1 > file2
awk '$3~/ct/' file1 > file2

last version is ok if ct is part of some in field #3

---

Same with grep

grep ct file1 > file2

-n is not needed, since it prints line number

---

Same with sed

sed -n '/ct/p' file1 > file2

Answer 4

awk '$3=="ct"' file1 > file2

This only filters lines where the third column must exactly match the string ct.