Hi i am new to shell programming i hope u can guide me along thanks.
Hi i need a function to search either book title or author from a .txt file and echo out the following
Title:*Enter*
Author:Scissorhands
Found 3 records :
C++ for dummies, John Scissorhands, $15.01, 10, 5
Java for dummies, Mary Scissorhands, $16.02, 20, 15
VB.NET for dummies, Edward Scissorhands, $17.03, 30, 25
eg
Found 3 records :
C++ for dummies, John Scissorhands, $15.01, 10, 5
Java for dummies, Mary Scissorhands, $16.02, 20, 15
VB.NET for dummies, Edward Scissorhands, $17.03, 30, 25
my file format is as below
Book name:author:price:Qty:Qty Sold
harry potter:james:12.99:197:101
function Search_book
{
FILE="/home/student/Downloads/BookDB.txt"
echo found 1 records : $FILE contents
cat FILE
}
Edit: Sorry, I misunderstood your question.
Updated mixed bash/perl solution:
#!/bin/bash
read -p "Enter search term: " search
perl -ne '
BEGIN{ $pattern = $ARGV[0]; shift; $n=0 }
#a=split /:/;
if ($a[0] =~ m/$pattern/i or $a[1] =~ m/$pattern/i) {
print "$a[0], $a[1],\$$a[2],$a[3],$a[4]\n";
$n += 1;
}
END{ print "Found $n title(s).\n" }
' "$search" /home/student/Downloads/BookDB.txt
Output:
$ ./search.sh
Enter search term: star wars vi
Title: Star wars VI - return of the jedi
Found 1 title(s).
Not that you need regular expressions for wildcards (i.e. . instead of ?, .* instead of *, etc.), and you don't need to put wildcards at beginning/end of the search term to find matches anywhere in a given (sub)string.
Of course you could also do this entirely in Perl, without the shell script wrapper:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $booklist = './books.txt';
my #book;
print "Enter search term: ";
chomp (my $pattern = <>);
open BOOKS, "<$booklist" or die $!;
my $n = 0;
foreach (<BOOKS>) {
chomp;
#book = split /:/;
if ($book[0] =~ m/$pattern/i or $book[1] =~ m/$pattern/i) {
print "$book[0], $book[1],\$$book[2],$book[3],$book[4]\n";
$n += 1;
}
}
close BOOKS;
print "Found $n title(s).\n";
For an awk solution see Adrian Frühwirth's answer.
search_book()
{
awk -F':' -v search="$1" '$1 ~ search || $2 ~ search { i++; printf "%s, %s,$%s,%s,%s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 } END { printf "%d records found\n", i }' books.txt
}
_
$ cat books.txt
X never marks the spot:Indiana Jones:9.99:1:1
A fistful of barnacles:Captain Twiddlymore:9.99:2:1
The time I blew up LeChuck:Guybrush Threepwood:8.99:100:60
When I blew up LeChuck:Guybrush Threepwood:8.99:100:50
Where I blew up LeChuck:Guybrush Threepwood:8.99:100:2
_
$ search_book Indiana
X never marks the spot, Indiana Jones,$9.99,1,1
1 records found
$ search_book Guybrush
The time I blew up LeChuck, Guybrush Threepwood,$8.99,100,60
When I blew up LeChuck, Guybrush Threepwood,$8.99,100,50
Where I blew up LeChuck, Guybrush Threepwood,$8.99,100,2
3 records found
$ search_book barnacle
A fistful of barnacles, Captain Twiddlymore,$9.99,2,1
1 records found
$ search_book foo
0 records found
# Wilson Turners last point on Adrian's post:
./book.sh
Enter search term: barnacle
A fistful of barnacles, Captain Twiddlymore,$9.99,2,1
1 records found
Here is how you call the awk function within your existing code:
#!/bin/bash
search_book()
{
awk -F':' -v search="$search" '$1 ~ search || $2 ~ search { i++; printf "%s, %s,$%s,%s,%s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 } END { printf "%d records found\n", i }' books.txt
}
read -p "Enter search term: " search
search_book
I was given a text file with a whole bunch of data sorted in columns. Each of the columns are
separated by commas.
How could I divide a column by another column to print an output answer? I am using Perl right now now so it has to be done in Perl. How could I do this?
This is what I have so far:
#!/usr/bin/perl
open (FILE, 'census2008.txt');
while (<FILE>) {
chomp;
($sumlev, $stname,$ctyname,$popestimate2008,$births2008,$deaths2008) = split(",");
}
close (FILE);
exit;
There are several options:
Read the file in line by line, split the columns on ',' and divide the relevant columns (don't forget to handle the divide-by-zero error)
Do the same thing as a one-liner:
$ perl -F/,/ -lane 'print( $F[1] == 0 ? "" : $F[3]/$F[1] )' file.txt
Utilize a ready-to-use CPAN module like Text::CSV
Of course, there are more unorthodox/crazy/unspeakable alternatives à la TMTOWTDI ™, so one could:
Parse out the relevant columns with a regex and divide the matches:
if (/^\d*,(\d+),\d*,(\d+)/) { say $2/$1 if $2 != 0; }
Do it with s///e:
$ perl -ple 's!^\d*,(\d+),\d*,(\d+).*$! $2 == 0 ? "" : $2/$1 !e' file.txt;
Get the shell to do the dirty work via backticks:
sub print_divide { say `cat file.txt | some_command_line_command` }
#!/usr/bin/env perl
# divides column 1 by column 2 of some ','-delimited file,
# read from standard input.
# usage:
# $ cat data.txt | 8458760.pl
while (<STDIN>) {
#values = split(/,/, $_);
print $values[0] / $values[1] . "\n";
}
If you have fixed width columns of data you could use 'unpack' along the lines of:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
while (<DATA>) {
chomp;
my ($sumlev,$stname,$ctyname,$popest,$births,$deaths)
= unpack("A2xA10xA15xA7xA5xA5");
printf "%-15s %4.2f\n", $ctyname, $births/$deaths;
}
__DATA__
10,Main ,My City , 10000, 200, 150
12,Poplar ,Somewhere , 3000, 90, 100
13,Maple ,Your Place , 9123, 100, 90
I have a file containing country, catalog number, year, description and price
Kenya 563-45 1995 Heron Plover Thrush Gonolek Apalis $6.60
Surinam 632-96 1982 Butterfliers $7.50
Seychelles 831-34 2002 WWF Frogs set of 4 $1.40
Togo 1722-25 2010 Cheetah, Zebra, Antelope $5.70
File isn't delimited by a "tab" or ":" anything. There is only spaces between them. can you please tell me how can I format this file(using awk ?) and how can I find the total price from this.
With command line perl:
$ cat /your/file | perl -e '$sum=0; for(<STDIN>) { $sum += $1 if(/\$([\d\.]+)/); }; print "$sum\n"'
21.2
and awk (assumes you have dollars at the end of each line):
$ cat /your/file | awk '{s+=substr($NF,2)} END{ print s}'
21.2
Also, in response to the comment. If you want to reformat on the command line:
$ cat /your/file | perl -e 'for(<STDIN>){#a=split /\s+/; $p=pop #a; \
$line=join "|", ($a[0],$a[1],$a[2], (join" ",#a[3..$#a]) ,$p); print "$line\n"}'
Kenya|563-45|1995|Heron Plover Thrush Gonolek Apalis|$6.60
Surinam|632-96|1982|Butterfliers|$7.50
Seychelles|831-34|2002|WWF Frogs set of 4|$1.40
Togo|1722-25|2010|Cheetah, Zebra, Antelope|$5.70
If you want to do this properly, I'd do it not on the cmd line, but write a proper program to parse it.
I thought first 3 and last column is fixed meaning but middle columns are not fixed. So middle columns are kept at last with space between and fixed columns are seperated by tab so that you can start to edit it with some spreadsheet program:
awk '{ printf("%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\t", $1, $2, $3, $NF);
for(i=4; i<NF; i++){ printf("%s ", $i); }
printf("\n")
}' < yourlist.txt
For conformity, a regexp-fu solution:
$ perl -lne '/^ (.+?) \s+ (\d+-\d+) \s+ (\d{4}) \s+ (.+?) \s+ ( \$ ( \d+ (?:\.\d+)? ) ) \s* $/x and $t+=$6, print join "•",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5 }{ print $t' input_file
Kenya•563-45•1995•Heron Plover Thrush Gonolek Apalis•$6.60
Surinam•632-96•1982•Butterfliers•$7.50
Seychelles•831-34•2002•WWF Frogs set of 4•$1.40
Togo•1722-25•2010•Cheetah, Zebra, Antelope•$5.70
21.2
Expanding upon udslk's answer, awk is certainly your friend here:
#!/usr/bin/env awk -f
BEGIN {
print "country, \"catalog number\", year, description, \"price ($)\""
}
{
description = $4
for (f = 5; f < NF; ++f) {
description = description " " $f
}
price = substr($NF, 2)
total += price
printf "\"%s\", \"%s\", \"%s\", \"%s\", %0.2f\n", $1, $2, $3, description, price
}
END {
printf "Total, , , , %0.2f\n", total
}
This spits out a CSV file with headers, which you can import into your favourite spreadsheet. It also adds the total. Switch commas with tabs according to taste.
This line worked until I had whitespace in the second field.
svn status | grep '\!' | gawk '{print $2;}' > removedProjs
is there a way to have awk print everything in $2 or greater? ($3, $4.. until we don't have anymore columns?)
I suppose I should add that I'm doing this in a Windows environment with Cygwin.
Print all columns:
awk '{print $0}' somefile
Print all but the first column:
awk '{$1=""; print $0}' somefile
Print all but the first two columns:
awk '{$1=$2=""; print $0}' somefile
There's a duplicate question with a simpler answer using cut:
svn status | grep '\!' | cut -d\ -f2-
-d specifies the delimeter (space), -f specifies the list of columns (all starting with the 2nd)
You could use a for-loop to loop through printing fields $2 through $NF (built-in variable that represents the number of fields on the line).
Edit:
Since "print" appends a newline, you'll want to buffer the results:
awk '{out = ""; for (i = 2; i <= NF; i++) {out = out " " $i}; print out}'
Alternatively, use printf:
awk '{for (i = 2; i <= NF; i++) {printf "%s ", $i}; printf "\n"}'
awk '{out=$2; for(i=3;i<=NF;i++){out=out" "$i}; print out}'
My answer is based on the one of VeeArr, but I noticed it started with a white space before it would print the second column (and the rest). As I only have 1 reputation point, I can't comment on it, so here it goes as a new answer:
start with "out" as the second column and then add all the other columns (if they exist). This goes well as long as there is a second column.
Most solutions with awk leave an space. The options here avoid that problem.
Option 1
A simple cut solution (works only with single delimiters):
command | cut -d' ' -f3-
Option 2
Forcing an awk re-calc sometimes remove the added leading space (OFS) left by removing the first fields (works with some versions of awk):
command | awk '{ $1=$2="";$0=$0;} NF=NF'
Option 3
Printing each field formatted with printf will give more control:
$ in=' 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 '
$ echo "$in"|awk -v n=2 '{ for(i=n+1;i<=NF;i++) printf("%s%s",$i,i==NF?RS:OFS);}'
3 4 5 6 7 8
However, all previous answers change all repeated FS between fields to OFS. Let's build a couple of option that do not do that.
Option 4 (recommended)
A loop with sub to remove fields and delimiters at the front.
And using the value of FS instead of space (which could be changed).
Is more portable, and doesn't trigger a change of FS to OFS:
NOTE: The ^[FS]* is to accept an input with leading spaces.
$ in=' 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 '
$ echo "$in" | awk '{ n=2; a="^["FS"]*[^"FS"]+["FS"]+";
for(i=1;i<=n;i++) sub( a , "" , $0 ) } 1 '
3 4 5 6 7 8
Option 5
It is quite possible to build a solution that does not add extra (leading or trailing) whitespace, and preserve existing whitespace(s) using the function gensub from GNU awk, as this:
$ echo ' 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ' |
awk -v n=2 'BEGIN{ a="^["FS"]*"; b="([^"FS"]+["FS"]+)"; c="{"n"}"; }
{ print(gensub(a""b""c,"",1)); }'
3 4 5 6 7 8
It also may be used to swap a group of fields given a count n:
$ echo ' 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ' |
awk -v n=2 'BEGIN{ a="^["FS"]*"; b="([^"FS"]+["FS"]+)"; c="{"n"}"; }
{
d=gensub(a""b""c,"",1);
e=gensub("^(.*)"d,"\\1",1,$0);
print("|"d"|","!"e"!");
}'
|3 4 5 6 7 8 | ! 1 2 !
Of course, in such case, the OFS is used to separate both parts of the line, and the trailing white space of the fields is still printed.
NOTE: [FS]* is used to allow leading spaces in the input line.
I personally tried all the answers mentioned above, but most of them were a bit complex or just not right. The easiest way to do it from my point of view is:
awk -F" " '{ for (i=4; i<=NF; i++) print $i }'
Where -F" " defines the delimiter for awk to use. In my case is the whitespace, which is also the default delimiter for awk. This means that -F" " can be ignored.
Where NF defines the total number of fields/columns. Therefore the loop will begin from the 4th field up to the last field/column.
Where $N retrieves the value of the Nth field. Therefore print $i will print the current field/column based based on the loop count.
awk '{ for(i=3; i<=NF; ++i) printf $i""FS; print "" }'
lauhub proposed this correct, simple and fast solution here
This was irritating me so much, I sat down and wrote a cut-like field specification parser, tested with GNU Awk 3.1.7.
First, create a new Awk library script called pfcut, with e.g.
sudo nano /usr/share/awk/pfcut
Then, paste in the script below, and save. After that, this is how the usage looks like:
$ echo "t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7" | awk -f pfcut --source '/^/ { pfcut("-4"); }'
t1 t2 t3 t4
$ echo "t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7" | awk -f pfcut --source '/^/ { pfcut("2-"); }'
t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7
$ echo "t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7" | awk -f pfcut --source '/^/ { pfcut("-2,4,6-"); }'
t1 t2 t4 t6 t7
To avoid typing all that, I guess the best one can do (see otherwise Automatically load a user function at startup with awk? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange) is add an alias to ~/.bashrc; e.g. with:
$ echo "alias awk-pfcut='awk -f pfcut --source'" >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc # refresh bash aliases
... then you can just call:
$ echo "t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7" | awk-pfcut '/^/ { pfcut("-2,4,6-"); }'
t1 t2 t4 t6 t7
Here is the source of the pfcut script:
# pfcut - print fields like cut
#
# sdaau, GNU GPL
# Nov, 2013
function spfcut(formatstring)
{
# parse format string
numsplitscomma = split(formatstring, fsa, ",");
numspecparts = 0;
split("", parts); # clear/initialize array (for e.g. `tail` piping into `awk`)
for(i=1;i<=numsplitscomma;i++) {
commapart=fsa[i];
numsplitsminus = split(fsa[i], cpa, "-");
# assume here a range is always just two parts: "a-b"
# also assume user has already sorted the ranges
#print numsplitsminus, cpa[1], cpa[2]; # debug
if(numsplitsminus==2) {
if ((cpa[1]) == "") cpa[1] = 1;
if ((cpa[2]) == "") cpa[2] = NF;
for(j=cpa[1];j<=cpa[2];j++) {
parts[numspecparts++] = j;
}
} else parts[numspecparts++] = commapart;
}
n=asort(parts); outs="";
for(i=1;i<=n;i++) {
outs = outs sprintf("%s%s", $parts[i], (i==n)?"":OFS);
#print(i, parts[i]); # debug
}
return outs;
}
function pfcut(formatstring) {
print spfcut(formatstring);
}
Would this work?
awk '{print substr($0,length($1)+1);}' < file
It leaves some whitespace in front though.
Printing out columns starting from #2 (the output will have no trailing space in the beginning):
ls -l | awk '{sub(/[^ ]+ /, ""); print $0}'
echo "1 2 3 4 5 6" | awk '{ $NF = ""; print $0}'
this one uses awk to print all except the last field
This is what I preferred from all the recommendations:
Printing from the 6th to last column.
ls -lthr | awk '{out=$6; for(i=7;i<=NF;i++){out=out" "$i}; print out}'
or
ls -lthr | awk '{ORS=" "; for(i=6;i<=NF;i++) print $i;print "\n"}'
If you need specific columns printed with arbitrary delimeter:
awk '{print $3 " " $4}'
col#3 col#4
awk '{print $3 "anything" $4}'
col#3anythingcol#4
So if you have whitespace in a column it will be two columns, but you can connect it with any delimiter or without it.
Perl solution:
perl -lane 'splice #F,0,1; print join " ",#F' file
These command-line options are used:
-n loop around every line of the input file, do not automatically print every line
-l removes newlines before processing, and adds them back in afterwards
-a autosplit mode – split input lines into the #F array. Defaults to splitting on whitespace
-e execute the perl code
splice #F,0,1 cleanly removes column 0 from the #F array
join " ",#F joins the elements of the #F array, using a space in-between each element
Python solution:
python -c "import sys;[sys.stdout.write(' '.join(line.split()[1:]) + '\n') for line in sys.stdin]" < file
I want to extend the proposed answers to the situation where fields are delimited by possibly several whitespaces –the reason why the OP is not using cut I suppose.
I know the OP asked about awk, but a sed approach would work here (example with printing columns from the 5th to the last):
pure sed approach
sed -r 's/^\s*(\S+\s+){4}//' somefile
Explanation:
s/// is the standard command to perform substitution
^\s* matches any consecutive whitespace at the beginning of the line
\S+\s+ means a column of data (non-whitespace chars followed by whitespace chars)
(){4} means the pattern is repeated 4 times.
sed and cut
sed -r 's/^\s+//; s/\s+/\t/g' somefile | cut -f5-
by just replacing consecutive whitespaces by a single tab;
tr and cut:
tr can also be used to squeeze consecutive characters with the -s option.
tr -s [:blank:] <somefile | cut -d' ' -f5-
If you don't want to reformat the part of the line that you don't chop off, the best solution I can think of is written in my answer in:
How to print all the columns after a particular number using awk?
It chops what is before the given field number N, and prints all the rest of the line, including field number N and maintaining the original spacing (it does not reformat). It doesn't mater if the string of the field appears also somewhere else in the line.
Define a function:
fromField () {
awk -v m="\x01" -v N="$1" '{$N=m$N; print substr($0,index($0,m)+1)}'
}
And use it like this:
$ echo " bat bi iru lau bost " | fromField 3
iru lau bost
$ echo " bat bi iru lau bost " | fromField 2
bi iru lau bost
Output maintains everything, including trailing spaces
In you particular case:
svn status | grep '\!' | fromField 2 > removedProjs
If your file/stream does not contain new-line characters in the middle of the lines (you could be using a different Record Separator), you can use:
awk -v m="\x0a" -v N="3" '{$N=m$N ;print substr($0, index($0,m)+1)}'
The first case will fail only in files/streams that contain the rare hexadecimal char number 1
This awk function returns substring of $0 that includes fields from begin to end:
function fields(begin, end, b, e, p, i) {
b = 0; e = 0; p = 0;
for (i = 1; i <= NF; ++i) {
if (begin == i) { b = p; }
p += length($i);
e = p;
if (end == i) { break; }
p += length(FS);
}
return substr($0, b + 1, e - b);
}
To get everything starting from field 3:
tail = fields(3);
To get section of $0 that covers fields 3 to 5:
middle = fields(3, 5);
b, e, p, i nonsense in function parameter list is just an awk way of declaring local variables.
All of the other answers given here and in linked questions fail in various ways given various possible FS values. Some leave leading and/or trailing white space, some convert every FS to the OFS, some rely on semantics that only apply when FS is the default value, some rely on negating FS in a bracket expression which will fail given a multi-char FS, etc.
To do this robustly for any FS, use GNU awk for the 4th arg to split():
$ cat tst.awk
{
split($0,flds,FS,seps)
for ( i=n; i<=NF; i++ ) {
printf "%s%s", flds[i], seps[i]
}
print ""
}
$ printf 'a b c d\n' | awk -v n=3 -f tst.awk
c d
$ printf ' a b c d\n' | awk -v n=3 -f tst.awk
c d
$ printf ' a b c d\n' | awk -v n=3 -F'[ ]' -f tst.awk
b c d
$ printf ' a b c d\n' | awk -v n=3 -F'[ ]+' -f tst.awk
b c d
$ printf 'a###b###c###d\n' | awk -v n=3 -F'###' -f tst.awk
c###d
$ printf '###a###b###c###d\n' | awk -v n=3 -F'###' -f tst.awk
b###c###d
Note that I'm using split() above because it's 3rg arg is a field separator, not just a regexp like the 2nd arg to match(). The difference is that field separators have additional semantics to regexps such as skipping leading and/or trailing blanks when the separator is a single blank char - if you wanted to use a while(match()) loop or any form of *sub() to emulate the above then you'd need to write code to implement those semantics whereas split() already implements them for you.
Awk examples looks complex here, here is simple Bash shell syntax:
command | while read -a cols; do echo ${cols[#]:1}; done
Where 1 is your nth column counting from 0.
Example
Given this content of file (in.txt):
c1
c1 c2
c1 c2 c3
c1 c2 c3 c4
c1 c2 c3 c4 c5
here is the output:
$ while read -a cols; do echo ${cols[#]:1}; done < in.txt
c2
c2 c3
c2 c3 c4
c2 c3 c4 c5
This would work if you are using Bash and you could use as many 'x ' as elements you wish to discard and it ignores multiple spaces if they are not escaped.
while read x b; do echo "$b"; done < filename
Perl:
#m=`ls -ltr dir | grep ^d | awk '{print \$6,\$7,\$8,\$9}'`;
foreach $i (#m)
{
print "$i\n";
}
UPDATE :
if you wanna use no function calls at all while preserving the spaces and tabs in between the remaining fields, then do :
echo " 1 2 33 4444 555555 \t6666666 " |
{m,g}awk ++NF FS='^[ \t]*[^ \t]*[ \t]+|[ \t]+$' OFS=
=
2 33 4444 555555 6666666
===================
You can make it a lot more straight forward :
svn status | [m/g]awk '/!/*sub("^[^ \t]*[ \t]+",_)'
svn status | [n]awk '(/!/)*sub("^[^ \t]*[ \t]+",_)'
Automatically takes care of the grep earlier in the pipe, as well as trimming out extra FS after blanking out $1, with the added bonus of leaving rest of the original input untouched instead of having tabs overwritten with spaces (unless that's the desired effect)
If you're very certain $1 does not contain special characters that need regex escaping, then it's even easier :
mawk '/!/*sub($!_"[ \t]+",_)'
gawk -c/P/e '/!/*sub($!_"""[ \t]+",_)'
Or if you prefer customizing FS+OFS to handle it all :
mawk 'NF*=/!/' FS='^[^ \t]*[ \t]+' OFS='' # this version uses OFS
This should be a reasonably comprehensive awk-field-sub-string-extraction function that
returns substring of $0 based on input ranges, inclusive
clamp in out of range values,
handle variable length field SEPs
has speedup treatments for ::
completely no inputs, returning $0 directly
input values resulting in guaranteed empty string ("")
FROM-field == 1
FS = "" that has split $0 out by individual chars
(so the FROM <(_)> and TO <(__)> fields behave like cut -c rather than cut -f)
original $0 restored, w/o overwriting FS seps with OFS
|
{m,g}awk '{
2 print "\n|---BEFORE-------------------------\n"
3 ($0) "\n|----------------------------\n\n ["
4 fld2(2, 5) "]\n [" fld2(3) "]\n [" fld2(4, 2)
5 "]<----------------------------------------------should be
6 empty\n [" fld2(3, 11) "]<------------------------should be
7 capped by NF\n [" fld2() "]\n [" fld2((OFS=FS="")*($0=$0)+11,
8 23) "]<-------------------FS=\"\", split by chars
9 \n\n|---AFTER-------------------------\n" ($0)
10 "\n|----------------------------"
11 }
12 function fld2(_,__,___,____,_____)
13 {
if (+__==(_=-_<+_ ?+_:_<_) || (___=____="")==__ || !NF) {
return $_
16 } else if (NF<_ || (__=NF<+__?NF:+__)<(_=+_?_:!_)) {
return ___
18 } else if (___==FS || _==!___) {
19 return ___<FS \
? substr("",$!_=$!_ substr("",__=$!(NF=__)))__
20 : substr($(_<_),_,__)
21 }
22 _____=$+(____=___="\37\36\35\32\31\30\27\26\25"\
"\24\23\21\20\17\16\6\5\4\3\2\1")
23 NF=__
24 if ($(!_)~("["(___)"]")) {
25 gsub("..","\\&&",___) + gsub(".",___,____)
27 ___=____
28 }
29 __=(_) substr("",_+=_^=_<_)
30 while(___!="") {
31 if ($(!_)!~(____=substr(___,--_,++_))) {
32 ___=____
33 break }
35 ___=substr(___,_+_^(!_))
36 }
37 return \
substr("",($__=___ $__)==(__=substr($!_,
_+index($!_,___))),_*($!_=_____))(__)
}'
those <TAB> are actual \t \011 but relabeled for display clarity
|---BEFORE-------------------------
1 2 33 4444 555555 <TAB>6666666
|----------------------------
[2 33 4444 555555]
[33]
[]<---------------------------------------------- should be empty
[33 4444 555555 6666666]<------------------------ should be capped by NF
[ 1 2 33 4444 555555 <TAB>6666666 ]
[ 2 33 4444 555555 <TAB>66]<------------------- FS="", split by chars
|---AFTER-------------------------
1 2 33 4444 555555 <TAB>6666666
|----------------------------
I wasn't happy with any of the awk solutions presented here because I wanted to extract the first few columns and then print the rest, so I turned to perl instead. The following code extracts the first two columns, and displays the rest as is:
echo -e "a b c d\te\t\tf g" | \
perl -ne 'my #f = split /\s+/, $_, 3; printf "first: %s second: %s rest: %s", #f;'
The advantage compared to the perl solution from Chris Koknat is that really only the first n elements are split off from the input string; the rest of the string isn't split at all and therefor stays completely intact. My example demonstrates this with a mix of spaces and tabs.
To change the amount of columns that should be extracted, replace the 3 in the example with n+1.
ls -la | awk '{o=$1" "$3; for (i=5; i<=NF; i++) o=o" "$i; print o }'
from this answer is not bad but the natural spacing is gone.
Please then compare it to this one:
ls -la | cut -d\ -f4-
Then you'd see the difference.
Even ls -la | awk '{$1=$2=""; print}' which is based on the answer voted best thus far is not preserve the formatting.
Thus I would use the following, and it also allows explicit selective columns in the beginning:
ls -la | cut -d\ -f1,4-
Note that every space counts for columns too, so for instance in the below, columns 1 and 3 are empty, 2 is INFO and 4 is:
$ echo " INFO 2014-10-11 10:16:19 main " | cut -d\ -f1,3
$ echo " INFO 2014-10-11 10:16:19 main " | cut -d\ -f2,4
INFO 2014-10-11
$
If you want formatted text, chain your commands with echo and use $0 to print the last field.
Example:
for i in {8..11}; do
s1="$i"
s2="str$i"
s3="str with spaces $i"
echo -n "$s1 $s2" | awk '{printf "|%3d|%6s",$1,$2}'
echo -en "$s3" | awk '{printf "|%-19s|\n", $0}'
done
Prints:
| 8| str8|str with spaces 8 |
| 9| str9|str with spaces 9 |
| 10| str10|str with spaces 10 |
| 11| str11|str with spaces 11 |
The top-voted answer by zed_0xff did not work for me.
I have a log where after $5 with an IP address can be more text or no text. I need everything from the IP address to the end of the line should there be anything after $5. In my case, this is actually within an awk program, not an awk one-liner so awk must solve the problem. When I try to remove the first 4 fields using the solution proposed by zed_0xff:
echo " 7 27.10.16. Thu 11:57:18 37.244.182.218" | awk '{$1=$2=$3=$4=""; printf "[%s]\n", $0}'
it spits out wrong and useless response (I added [..] to demonstrate):
[ 37.244.182.218 one two three]
There are even some suggestions to combine substr with this wrong answer, but that only complicates things. It offers no improvement.
Instead, if columns are fixed width until the cut point and awk is needed, the correct answer is:
echo " 7 27.10.16. Thu 11:57:18 37.244.182.218" | awk '{printf "[%s]\n", substr($0,28)}'
which produces the desired output:
[37.244.182.218 one two three]