How to change row by order nr?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello,
I have a file with thousands of rows and I need to change sequence of lines.

Sample file:

#NAME
#SERVICE 112233
#DESCRIPTION AABBCCDD
#SERVICE 738292
#DESCRIPTION FFYYRRTT
...
...
...

Desired output:

#NAME
#DESCRIPTION AABBCCDD
#SERVICE 112233
#DESCRIPTION FFYYRRTT
#SERVICE 738292
...
...
...

First line of the file should remain its position.

I'd appreciate if you could lead me how I can get required output .

Kind regards
Boris

2

Try something like this:

awk '/#NAME/{print} /#SERVICE/{s=$0} /#DESCRIPTION/{print s; print}' file

or

sed -n '1{p;n;};h;n;G;p' file
1 Like
3

Not clear. So you have records of five lines each, and, within each record, you just want to swap line 2 with 3, and line 4 with 5?

4

Hello Scrutinizer,
Thanks, I am gonna test your code now.

Hello Rudic,
"#NAME" phrase contains only in one line. I need to replace #SERVICE line with #DESCRIPTION line.
Line 2 & 3 , 4 & 5, 6 & 7, .... , 998&999 , so on..

Kind regards
Boris

---------- Post updated at 01:08 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:55 PM ----------

Thanks Scrutinizer,

Below code gave the output that I needed.

sed -n '1{p;n;};h;n;G;p' file

Many thanks
Boris

5

Try also

awk '!(NR%2) {T = $0; next} {printf "%s%c%s" ORS, $0, TRS, T; TRS = ORS}' file
6

Hello Rudic,
That's nice....

Thank You Scrutinizer & Rudic,
Both answers gave what I needed...

kind regards
Boris