How to interchange the places of 1st name and last name?

ravisingh1 · 04-17-2013, 04:08 AM

Code:

cat emp.lst

12  |Rob Cliff    |G.M.    
14  |Mark Rob   |Chairman

Please use awk to invert the names in the file emp.lst, i.e. the surname should be 1st and then the 1st name. There are trailing spaces even in each field making them fixed length.

druuna · 04-17-2013, 04:37 AM

Homework? We are willing to help, but we won't do it for you....

What have you tried this far and what are the problems you run into?

konsolebox · 04-17-2013, 05:46 AM

Read the manual.

ravisingh1 · 04-17-2013, 09:25 AM

Code:

I want that the name as shown in the 2nd field should be a bit modified. The 2nd name should come 1st. 
For example "Rob Cliff" should become "Cliff Rob"
Write program so that the complete file should be modified in the 2nd field.
i.e., the output should be:

cat emp.lst

12  |Cliff Rob    |G.M.    
14  |Rob Mark   |Chairman

I tried this way:

Code:

awk -F '{split($2,arr," "}; print arr[2],arr[1] }' emp.lst

The output is giving the desired result but I am not able to include this output in the complete file. The output of the above only shifts the 2nd name and the 1st name.
My output only gives:

Code:

Cliff Rob 
 Rob Mark

konsolebox · 04-17-2013, 09:34 AM

Code:

awk -F '{split($2,arr," "}; print arr[2],arr[1] }' emp.lst

Causes an error message:

Code:

awk: fatal: Unmatched ( or \(: /{split($2,arr," "}; print arr[2],arr[1] }/

You sure that's the code you ran? Cause there's no part of it that splits the words from the pipe (|).

druuna · 04-17-2013, 09:40 AM

@ravisingh1: Your code doesn't make any sense at all.

Have a look at this:

Code:

$ awk 'BEGIN { FS="[ |]" } { print $5, $4 }' emp.lst
Cliff Rob
Rob Mark

Up to you to figure out how this works.

AWK related links:

ravisingh1 · 04-18-2013, 08:23 PM

It should be

Quote:

awk -F"|" '{split($2,arr," "}; print arr[2],arr[1] }' emp.lst

David the H. · 04-21-2013, 11:58 AM

Quote:

There are trailing spaces even in each field making them fixed length.

Your example text does show trailing spaces, but the two lines are different; the delimiters don't line up. Aren't the fields supposed to have the same length?

Assuming that the output needs to have that same length as the input, then this really requires something more complex than the basic split function. In fact, I'd use gawk's new patsplit instead, or the related FPAT feature.

patsplit string function

splitting by content

I've already worked out a solution that works for the above text, but I'm going to put off posting it until you've had a chance to figure it out yourself.

If a recent version of gawk can't be used, then you may be able to first record the length of $2, and then ensure that the output is padded with spaces equal to the total length - text length.

ravisingh1 · 04-22-2013, 03:15 AM

Yes the fields are supposed to be of the same length. The delimiters should line up one below the other. While typing I made it of the same length but after submitting the post it got changed

grail · 04-22-2013, 09:32 AM

I believe David has put you on the correct path.

ravisingh1 · 04-23-2013, 01:23 AM

How come a post in between got vanished!!!!It was from ritu3356