[SOLVED] how to distinguish between tab and space in a file

akhand jyoti · 03-22-2011, 01:50 AM

suppose in tab separated file with n columns and if in a column i put a value which is space separated .how can i able to find out a specific column..ie

NAME<TAB>ADDRESS<TAB>AGE
akhand jyoti<TAB>banglore<TAB>21
vijay<TAB>new delhi<TAB>22
ram kumar verma<TAB>ram nagar<TAB>43
..
..

now i want to print NAME column(or any column).
how can i do that?
thanks in anticipation!

retxed · 03-22-2011, 02:06 AM

I think "cut" command that is a filter in Linux does exactly what you are desiring.....It by default takes TAB as a delimiter.
Look into it....

Quote:

cut -f 1,2 <filename>

will list the names and city.

Hope it helps!!

EricTRA · 03-22-2011, 02:08 AM

Hello,

Have a look at the man page for awk:

Code:

man awk

If you're sure that data are divided by tabs, use \t as field separator and print the desired data.

Code:

awk -F"\t" '{ print $1 }' yourfile

will give you the first column as output. Is that what you're looking for?

Kind regards,

Eric

Telengard · 03-22-2011, 02:12 AM

I think you want the cut command.

Code:

foo$ cut -f 1 < addresses.txt
NAME
akhand jyoti
vijay
ram kumar verma
foo$ cut -f 2 < addresses.txt
ADDRESS
banglore
new delhi
ram nagar
foo$ cut -f 3 < addresses.txt
AGE
21
22
43
foo$

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutil...cut-invocation

It will work fine as long as your fields are tab delimited and your needs are simple.

If you want to do very complex text transformations then you should look into gawk.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man...ode/index.html

HTH