LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Extracting columns

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Extracting columns

Hi,

How can I extract 5th column from a file without the header. Please help me....

Thank you

For simple extraction you can usually use cut, and for more complex jobs you'd probably want to use awk.

Please give us a real-life example of the file contents, along with how you want the output to look, if you want any detailed advice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by David the H. (Post 4129215)

Come on! this is a easy one, put an example just for googlers sake. I'll use my own example.

Code:

cat sarout 

Linux 2.6.32-gentoo-r7 (GUNGNER)        10/16/10        _i686_        (8 CPU)



20:20:21        CPU    %user    %nice  %system  %iowait    %steal    %idle

20:20:22        all      2.15      0.00      1.01      0.13      0.00    96.72

20:20:23        all      1.82      0.00      0.97      0.00      0.00    97.21

20:20:24        all      1.90      0.00      0.88      0.00      0.00    97.22

20:20:25        all      1.99      0.00      0.99      0.00      0.00    97.02

If I want to get the 5th column of this.
I'll use

Code:

cat sarout | awk '{print $5}'

_i686_



%system

1.01

0.97

0.88

0.99

For truncating the header there are a lot of options, I'll show you the grep one.

Code:

 cat sarout | awk '{print $5}' | grep -E "[0-9]\.[0-9]{2}"

1.01

0.97

0.88

0.99

Done :D

Well, sure, I could've just posted something like that. ;) But I think it's important for posters to learn how to define their questions clearly and with enough detail up-front. I don't enjoy having to guess about the poster's situation or asking a lot of fishing questions.

I also like to encourage them to do their own research, which is why I mentioned which tools are most likely to be useful.

In short, vague questions generally get vague answers. Detailed posts are more likely to draw out helpful responses, and get them faster. :twocents:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ndarkduck (Post 4129946)

For truncating the header there are a lot of options, I'll show you the grep one.

Code:

 cat sarout | awk '{print $5}' | grep -E "[0-9]\.[0-9]{2}"

1.01

0.97

0.88

0.99

Done :D

its an easy question, but you make the solution look harder. Lose the cat, its useless

Code:

awk 'NR>1{print $5}' sarout

Thank you guys. That sloved my problem. I'll be more specific next time.
Thanks again