How to delete data from text file?

[71.7 611.7 251.7 431.7] is tab delimited data on 14th line, second data, I want to delete 431.7, How to do it?

[Arun Badigannavar]

Data1 [71.7 611.7 251.7 431.7] Description, all these three data are tab delimited, in the second tab I have data, which I want to alter

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You need to read in the data, make the change, and write it out again, preferably to a different file (so that if there is a problem you do not lose the original.)

The only circumstance under which you can alter a text file "in place" is if the replacement is exactly the same size as the original.