how to extract ascii separated values in a text file?

depam · 01-24-2012, 10:34 PM

Hi,

I have one file consisting of lines which has some info separated by "|". I want to grep the file and provides me a list of records on the 3rd, 4th entry on a single line. How will this be possible? I am guessing should be using "sed" but not an expert. Also wondering if you can provide me a good reference for logs and values manipulation. Thanks.

flamelord · 01-24-2012, 11:59 PM

Do you mean the 3rd and 4th fields on the records that get through grep?

That could be achieved with:

Code:

grep <whatever> | cut -d'|' -f3,4

it could also be down in awk with something like:

Code:

awk -F'|' '/pattern/ {$3, $4}'

sed could do it too, but I think that would be a little more complicated.

chrism01 · 01-25-2012, 12:08 AM

Given file t.t

Code:

a|b|c|d|e
q|w|e|r|t

then

Code:

awk '{print $3,$4}' FS="|" t.t
c d
e r

HTH

depam · 01-26-2012, 10:31 PM

Thanks guys...Now another complicated thing is that inside the file, there are few texts and this information is in the middle of the line.

Example:

some text some text [A|B|C|D] some text some text

I want to check the pattern "II" in that line and output only those lines with that content and if possible only those starting with "[" and ending with "]".

Thanks.

flamelord · 01-27-2012, 12:43 AM

I think something like

Code:

sed -e '/II/ s/.*\[\(.*\)\].*/\1/p' -n <file>

would work