BASH - How to retrieve a single line from the file?

Question

How to retrieve a single line from the file?

file.txt
"aaaaaaa"
"bbbbbbb"
"ccccccc"
"ddddddd"

I need to retrieve the line 3 ("ccccccc") Thank you.

Answer 1

sed is your friend. sed -n 3p prints the third line (-n: no automatic print, 3p: print when line number is 3). You can also have much more complex patterns, for example sed -n 3,10p to print lines 3 to 10.

If the file is very big, you may consider to not cycle through the whole file, but quit after the print. sed -n '3{p;q}'