[SOLVED] Command line search in file for < date

jdgr · 04-10-2013, 03:01 PM

Hi All,

I have a csv file that I am trying to parse through looking for any lines that are less than a today's date.

I've been trying to use grep, but it doesn't seem to work for "less than". I saw on a few sites I could use

Code:

awl '$7 <= date' file.csv

but it doesn't seem to work.

Does anyone know how to search through a file to find everything before today's date.

I'm running Fedora 18.

Thanks,
Jeremy

schneidz · 04-10-2013, 03:18 PM

the name of the command should be awk

jdgr · 04-10-2013, 03:42 PM

Sorry, that was a typo when I submitted. Doing two things at once. I was running the command

Code:

awk '$7 <= date' file.csv

and it doesn't work like it should. I even converted the dates into their integer equivalents and tried searching for less than the number, and that still didn't return the correct results.

Thanks,
Jeremy

suicidaleggroll · 04-10-2013, 04:44 PM

Maybe posting some sample lines from file.csv and the incorrect output of your awk command would help people narrow it down.

jdgr · 04-11-2013, 08:00 AM

Here are the first couple lines of my csv file

Code:

Employee,Phone Model,Number,Provider,,Personal/Company,Eligible for Hardware Upgrade,Extra Cost,User Response,Model,Serial Number,IMEI/MEID 
Alan Bunting,Blackberry 9660,,,,Company,41012,,Pesonal,Blackberry Torch 9860,2869EE7B,356838.04.186284.1
Allan Pepper,Samsung Galaxy Nexus S,,Rogers,,Company,41459,,,,,
Allan Webb,Blackberry 9860,,,,Company,41725,,,,,

It's a listing of the cell phone users in my company. The seventh column (starting at 1) is the date field. At present, it is set as an integer date (which may also be blank) to try and make things simpler. If I run the command

Code:

awk '$7 <= 41375' cellphones.csv

it dumps out the entire file. It doesn't give any error, just outputs the entire file everytime, as if it's matching every line (which is not possible).

Thanks,
Jeremy

schneidz · 04-11-2013, 08:17 AM

Code:

man awk
[schneidz@hyper ~]$ awk -F , '$7 <= 41375' jdgr.csv 
Alan Bunting,Blackberry 9660,,,,Company,41012,,Pesonal,Blackberry Torch 9860,2869EE7B,356838.04.186284.1

fyi: this looks cleaner:

Code:

awk -F , '$7 <= 20130101' jdgr.csv

jdgr · 04-11-2013, 08:35 AM

I have never used awk before and I was originally trying to do it with grep. The commands I found online didn't include the -F option, and while I looked through man awk, I missed that option because I didn't know what I was looking for (I thought the $7 was the problem).

Thanks very much for your help, the command worked like I wanted. Now that I have the proper syntax, I will be changing it back over to date format.

Thanks again!
Jeremy