applescript to remove first line from CSV

Saved as an Applescript App, this will delete the first line of text files dropped on the App

USE WITH CAUTION and Test

on openthe_Files

repeat with i in the_Files

tell application "Finder"

if name extension of i is "csv" then

do shell script "sed -i \"\" '1 d' " & quoted form of POSIX path of i

end if

end tell

end repeat

end open

Arthur, note that I edited my post to add a test so that only CSV files are processed.

Dear Tony,

I've tried creating an Automator App, dragged the Shell Script and pasted your code.

It gives me an error "The action “Run shell script” has found an error".

Also, how to remove the last line of a file? (perhaps also good to know how to remove the last 3 lines as I need)

Tks a lot.

You mistakenly used the Run Shell Script action, when you need Run AppleScript action. Tony's solution was AppleScript, not Bash scripting.

When you insert the Run AppleScript, it will have boilerplate code in it. Just remove that, and paste Tony's script into it.

Let's say that I have a text file (z.txt) in my home directory, and it contains the letters A - F, one letter per line. The following AppleScript do shell script invocations do what their comment says:

set pn to ((path to home folder as text) & "z.txt")

-- remove last line from file, update it in place (-i " ")

do shell script "sed -i \" \" '$d' " & (POSIX path of pn)'s quoted form

Result: A B C D E

-- remove last 3 lines from file, update it in place (-i " ").

do shell script "sed -i \" \" -n -e :a -e '1,3!{P;N;D;};N;ba' " & (POSIX path of pn)'s quoted form

Result: A B C

-- remove last 3 lines from file (\n and \z need to be escaped for AppleScript), update it in place, keeping the original file in z.txt.orig.

do shell script "perl -i.orig -0777pe's/(?:.*\\n){3}\\z//' " & (POSIX path of pn)'s quoted form

Result: A B C

Thanks a lot!

Not as succinct as the nice solutions above, but it's worth noting that good old "plain" AppleScript does a pretty good job at this kind of thing.

You just vary the starting and ending "paragraph" number. (In this example the first and last lines are removed.) That can be easier for those of us who aren't as fluent as we should be with sed and regular expressions and escaping characters for the shell and all that.

Note that this example has no error checking to make sure the file you are dropping on the Automator app is text, so use with care.

SG

on run {f}

set s to read (f) as «class utf8»

set text item delimiters to return

set s to s's paragraphs 2 thru -2 as string

set text item delimiters to ""

open for accessf with write permission

set eoffto 0

writestof

close accessf

end run

Good evening, very well script but I did not understand why it don't worked . By rereadting it I saw an inversion.

You wrote

"Set s to s's paragraphs 2 thru -2 have as string"

and it can be only

set ss to (paragraphs 2 thru -2) of s as string

and

write ss to f