title: Remove the middle n characters from lines in Bash
body: <p>I am trying to cut out the middle of each line in a file. All the lines are like this: </p>
  
  <pre><code>79.472850   97 SILENCE 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and I need to end up with:</p>
  
  <pre><code>79.472850 SILENCE
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As each line has the undesired portion starting at character ten and ending at character 14, 
  I was trying to use sed in this way:</p>
  
  <p><code>sed "s/\(.\{9\}\).\{6\}//"</code> but I just end up with everything after character 14. The numbers following the tab space change in every file. What can I do to make sed just cut out the tab and two digits?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for your help.</p>