How can I delete every Xth line in a text file?

Question

Consider a text file with scientific data, e.g.:

5.787037037037037063e-02 2.048402977658663748e-01
1.157407407407407413e-01 4.021264347118673754e-01
1.736111         


        

Answer 1

This might work for you (GNU sed):

seq 10 | sed '0~2d' # delete every 2nd line
1
3
5
7
9
seq 100 | sed '0~10!d' # delete 9 out of 10 lines
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100