Modify Text in a file

[maxcell]

I have a file that in which email messages are stored in and every email is separated by by a ^Z character (Control-Z).

I need to delete all emails after the 65,00th one.

Any suggests on accomplishing this?

[burschik]

You can do this with "awk". Set the RS to ^Z and throw away all the records after the limit.

[creepy cripple]

to preserve your emails file, make sure you add a ctrl+z after writing each email. one possible way to accomplish that would be:

#process.awk
BEGIN {
RS="^Z"
}
{
if ( NR <= 65 ) {
printf("%s",$0);
printf("%s","^Z")
}
}

and then you call this script from the command line:
awk -f process.awk emailsfile1 > emailsfile2

of course you can redirect the output to emailsfile1 itself, but you should see first if this does what you really want