Search file for text and delete the found text. How?

Question

I need to know how to search a file for text and delete the found text. I think grep will let you do this but not sure of the syntax.

Answer 1

Hi Dmcrory,
   In addition to what Camelot and nobody loopback point out, one must also consider the fact that UNIX text tools are largely line based. You also fail to tell us for what kind of text you are searching. If you are looking for multiple words, there's a very good chance of finding the expression wrapped onto different lines. With hyphenation, even single words can wrap to multiple lines. Tools that search line-by-line will miss these unless you use multiline techniques.
   Multiline substitutions require that you write "read-ahead" code for the command line tool that you're using and that you take that into account in the substitution. Given how you want the results to be printed out, you may also want to preserve any newlines found in the match, which is even more difficult. That could bring up the subject of line endings but that's a completely different topic.
   I apologize if this sounds discouraging. Multiline searches aren't needed that often and in most of those cases, exceptions can be dealt with by hand. I just didn't want you to get surprised by it. To give you an idea of how easy basic substitution is, have a look at Tom Christiansen's Cultured Perl: One-liners 102 and One-liners 101. Both have some "in-place" substitution examples.
Gary
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