Is there way to delete duplicate header in a file in Unix?

awk, csv, duplicates, linux, sed

Solution

If you know that the first line contains the header, just delete all other instances of that.

awk 'FNR==1 { header = $0; print }
     $0 != header' file

If that won't work, please tell us how we can identify a header line. If it's just a static string, `grep -vF 'that string'` or if it matches a particular regex, `grep -v 'that regex'`.

Problem

How can I delete multiple headers from a file? I tried to use the below code after finding it from How can I delete duplicate lines in a file in Unix?. ``` awk '!x[$0]++' file.txt ``` It is deleting all the duplicate records in the file. But in my case, I just need the header duplicates to be removed, not the duplicate records in the file. For example, I have a file with the below data: ``` column1, column2, column3, column4, column5 value11, value12, value13, value14, value14 value21, value22, value23, value24, value25 value31, value32, value33, value34, value35 value41, value42, value43, value44, value45 value51, value52, value53, value54, value55 value21, value22, value23, value24, value25 column1, column2, column3, column4, column5 value11, value12, value13, value14, value14 value21, value22, value23, value24, value25 column1, column2, column3, column4, column5 column1, column2, column3, column4, column5 ``` I am expecting the output as below: ``` column1, column2, column3, column4, column5 value11, value12, value13, value14, value14 value21, value22, value23, value24, value25 value31, value32, value33, value34, value35 value41, value42, value43, value44, value45 value51, value52, value53, value54, value55 value21, value22, value23, value24, value25 value11, value12, value13, value14, value14 value21, value22, value23, value24, value25 ```

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