print every nth line (sed or awk solution?)

[pigna]

Trying to print every nth line of a huge file. Normally when using gsed one can use sed -n '3~7p' to print every 7th row starting from the 3th one.

Working on AIX teh syntax sed -n '3,${p;n;n;n;n;n;n;}' is needed. However the problem is my file is to big so the param $p;n...... is becoming to large (5991 n's).

Is there a better way to do this in sed or awk?

 

[feherke]

Hi

Not a complete replacement but is enough for your specification : "print every 7th row starting from the 3th one".

awk 'NR%7==3' /input/file

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[pigna]

To clarify. Depending on the filesize I need to read every n th row. The bigger the file the larger the number of lines I want to skip...

 

[pigna]

Thanks a lot that is already doing it. How simple can it be