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Delete Line

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The Delete Line activity deletes lines from a text file. Use the Delete Line activity to delete outdated lines of text from a text file.

This activity replaces functionality in the Manage Text File legacy activity from Opalis 6.3.

Configure the Delete Line Activity

Before you configure the Delete Line activity, you need to determine the following:

  • The name of the file that you want to delete the line from.

  • The file encoding type that the file you want to delete the line from uses.

  • The line numbers of the lines that you want to delete.

Use the following information to configure the Delete Line activity.

Details Tab

Settings Configuration Instructions
File Enter the path and name of the file that you want to delete the text from, or select the ellipsis button (...) and browse for it.
File encoding Select the ellipsis button (...) and select the format that the file is encoded in from the File encoding drop-down list. Verify that you select the correct encoding format. If the file uses a different encoding format, the activity fails.
Line numbers Enter the line numbers of the text that you want to delete from the file that you specified.

To specify a range of lines, use a hyphen: 1-3. This deletes lines 1 to 3.

To specify specific lines, use a comma: 5,7,9. This deletes lines 5, 7, and 9.

Combine the range and specific lines: 1-3,5,7,9. This deletes lines 1 to 3, and lines 5, 7, and 9.

To specify from a specific line to the last line of the file, type the line number, hyphen, and END: 4-END. This deletes lines 4 to the last line of the file.

To specify from a specific line to a line relative to the last line of the file, type the line number, hyphen, the less-than sign, and the line number relative to the end line: 4-END<3. If the file has 20 lines, this deletes lines 4 to 17 from the file. <3 represents the third line from the end.

To specify the last number of lines, type LASTLINES, colon, and the last number of lines that you want to delete: LASTLINES: 10. This deletes the last 10 lines of the file.

Combine different types of operations: 1-5, 8, 10-END<20, LASTLINES: 10. This deletes lines 1 to 5, line 8, line 10 to the 20th line from the end, and the last 10 lines. Don't overlap lines or line ranges when combining operations. For example, 5-END, LASTLINES:10 fails because the 5-END operation already deletes to the end, so the LASTLINES:10 operation can't succeed because the lines are already deleted, and the activity fails. Important: Don't specify line numbers that don't exist in the file, and don't specify a line number more than once, or the activity fails.

Published Data

The following table lists the published data items.

Item Description
File name The file name of the text file from which the line is deleted.
File encoding The file encoding format that you selected in the File encoding field.
Line number The line number of each line that was deleted. A Published Data item is created for each line that was deleted.
Line numbers The line number range that the user entered in the field.
Deleted text The text that was deleted from the file.
Number of deletions The number of deletions that occurred.