Remove last N lines from a text file in Linux
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How can I delete a specific number of lines from the end of a text file using Linux command-line tools?
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Use head to keep all but the last N lines, overwriting the file:
head -n -N input.txt > tmp && mv tmp input.txt
Example: remove last 3 lines
head -n -3 file.txt > tmp && mv tmp file.txt
If you want in-place editing without a temp file. The command
sed -i "$(($(wc -l < file)-22)),\$d" file
is used to delete the last 22 lines from a file named file.
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