I'd like to know how cat passwd | awk -F':' '{printf $1}' works. cat /etc/passwd is a list of users with ID and folders from root to the current user (I don't know if it has something to do with cat passwd). -F is some kind of input file and {printf $1} is printing the first column. That's what I've search so far but seems confusing to me.
Can anyone help me or explain to me if it's right or wrong, please?
This is equivalent to awk -F: '{print $1}' passwd. The cat command is superfluous as all it does is read a file.
The -F option determines the field separator for awk. The quotes around the colon are also superfluous since colon is not special to the shell in this context. The print invocation tells awk to print the first field using $1. You are not passing a format string, so you probably mean print instead of printf.
Related
I need to grep some pattern and further i need to print some output within that. Currently I am using the below command which is working fine. But I like to eliminate using multiple pipe and want to use single awk command to achieve the same output. Is there a way to do it using awk?
root#Server1 # cat file
Jenny:Mon,Tue,Wed:Morning
David:Thu,Fri,Sat:Evening
root#Server1 # awk '/Jenny/ {print $0}' file | awk -F ":" '{ print $2 }' | awk -F "," '{ print $1 }'
Mon
I want to get this output using single awk command. Any help?
You can try something like:
awk -F: '/Jenny/ {split($2,a,","); print a[1]}' file
Try this
awk -F'[:,]+' '/Jenny/{print $2}' file.txt
It is using muliple -F value inside the [ ]
The + means one or more since it is treated as a regex.
For this particular job, I find grep to be slightly more robust.
Unless your company has a policy not to hire people named Eve.
(Try it out if you don't understand.)
grep -oP '^[^:]*Jenny[^:]*:\K[^,:]+' file
Or to do a whole-word match:
grep -oP '^[^:]*\bJenny\b[^:]*:\K[^,:]+' file
Or when you are confident that "Jenny" is the full name:
grep -oP '^Jenny:\K[^,:]+' file
Output:
Mon
Explanation:
The stuff up until \K speaks for itself: it selects the line(s) with the desired name.
[^,:]+ captures the day of week (in this case Mon).
\K cuts off everything preceding Mon.
-o cuts off anything following Mon.
I have CSV columns that I'm working with:
info,example-string,super-example-string,otherinfo
I would like to get:
example-string super example string
Right now, I'm running the following command:
awk -F ',' '{print $3}' | sed "s/-//g"
But, then I have to paste the lines together to combine $2 and $3.
Is there anyway to do something like this?
awk -F ',' '{print $2" "$3}' | sed "s/-//g"
Except, where the sed command is only performed on $3 and $2 stays in place? I'm just concerned later on if the lines don't match up, the data could be misaligned.
Please note: I need to keep the pipe for the SED command. I just used a simple example but I end up running a lot of commands after that as well.
Try:
$ awk -F, '{gsub(/-/," ",$3); print $2,$3}' file
example-string super example string
How it works
-F,
This tells awk to use a comma as the field separator.
gsub(/-/," ",$3)
This replaces all - in field 3 with spaces.
print $2,$3
This prints fields 2 and 3.
Examples using pipelines
$ echo 'info,example-string,super-example-string,otherinfo' | awk -F, '{gsub(/-/," ",$3); print $2,$3}'
example-string super example string
In a pipeline with sed:
$ echo 'info,example-string,super-example-string,otherinfo' | awk -F, '{gsub(/-/," ",$3); print $2,$3}' | sed 's/string/String/g'
example-String super example String
Though best solution will be either use a single sed or use single awk. Since you have requested to use awk and sed solution so providing this. Also considering your actual data will be same as shown sample Input_file.
awk -F, '{print $2,$3}' Input_file | sed 's/\([^ ]*\)\([^-]*\)-\([^-]*\)-\([^-]*\)/\1 \2 \3 \4/'
Output will be as follows.
example-string super example string
I'm trying to take a column and pipe it through an echo command. If possible, I would like to keep it in one line or do this as efficiently as possible. While researching, I found that I have to use single quotes to expand the variable and to escape the double quotes.
Here's what I was trying:
awk -F ',' '{print $2}' file1.txt | while read line; do echo "<href=\"'${i}'\">'${i}'</a>"; done
But, I keep getting the number of lines than the single line's output. If you know how to caputure each line in field 4, that would be so helpful.
File1.txt:
Hello,http://example1.com
Hello,http://example2.com
Hello,http://example3.com
Desired output:
<href="http://example1.com">http://example1.com</a>
<href="http://example2.com">http://example2.com</a>
<href="http://example3.com">http://example3.com</a>
$ awk -F, '{printf "<href=\"%s\">%s</a>\n", $2, $2}' file
<href="http://example1.com">http://example1.com</a>
<href="http://example2.com">http://example2.com</a>
<href="http://example3.com">http://example3.com</a>
Or slightly briefer but less robustly:
$ sed 's/.*,\(.*\)/<href="\1">\1<\/a>/' file
<href="http://example1.com">http://example1.com</a>
<href="http://example2.com">http://example2.com</a>
<href="http://example3.com">http://example3.com</a>
I was given this question during an interview. I said I could do it with java or python like xreadlines() function to traverse the whole file and fetch the column, but the interviewer wanted me to just use linux cmd. How can I achieve that?
You can use the command awk. Below is an example of printing out the second column of a file:
awk -F, '{print $2}' file.txt
And to store it, you redirect it into a file:
awk -F, '{print $2}' file.txt > output.txt
You can use cut:
cut -d, -f2 /path/to/csv/file
I'd add to Andreas answer, but can't comment yet.
With csv, you have to give awk a field seperator argument, or it will define fields bound by whitespace instead of commas. (Obviously, csv that uses a different field seperator will need a different character to be declared.)
awk -F, '{print $2}' file.txt
I need to assign the output of a command to a variable. The command I tried is:
grep UUID fstab | awk '/ext4/ {print $1}' | awk '{print substr($0,6)}'
I try this code to assign a variable:
UUID=$(grep UUID fstab | awk '/ext4/ {print $1}' | awk '{print substr($0,6)}')
However, it gives a syntax error. In addition I want it to work in a bash script.
The error is:
./upload.sh: line 12: syntax error near unexpected token ENE=$( grep UUID fstab | awk '/ext4/ {print $1}' | awk '{print substr($0,6)}'
)'
./upload.sh: line 12: ENE=$( grep UUID fstab | awk '/ext4/ {print $1}' | awk '{print substr($0,6)}'
)'
well, using the '$()' subshell operator is a common way to get the output of a bash command. As it spans a subshell it is not that efficient.
I tried :
UUID=$(grep UUID /etc/fstab|awk '/ext4/ {print $1}'|awk '{print substr($0,6)}')
echo $UUID # writes e577b87e-2fec-893b-c237-6a14aeb5b390
it works perfectly :)
EDIT:
Of course you can shorten your command :
# First step : Only one awk
UUID=$(grep UUID /etc/fstab|awk '/ext4/ {print substr($1,6)}')
Once more time :
# Second step : awk has a powerful regular expression engine ^^
UUID=$(cat /etc/fstab|awk '/UUID.*ext4/ {print substr($1,6)}')
You can also use awk with a file argument ::
# Third step : awk use fstab directlty
UUID=$(awk '/UUID.*ext4/ {print substr($1,6)}' /etc/fstab)
Just for trouble-shooting purposes, and something else to try to see if you can get this to work, you could also try to use "backticks", e.g,
cur_dir=`pwd`
would save the output of the pwd command in your variable cur_dir, though using $() approach is generally preferable.
To quote from a pages given to me on http://unix.stackexchange.com:
The second form `COMMAND` (using backticks) is more or less obsolete for Bash, since it
has some trouble with nesting ("inner" backticks need to be escaped)
and escaping characters. Use $(COMMAND), it's also POSIX!