I have a txt file with 500 records/rows.

I want to edit row 23, column 5-8 of the file & change it to 'wxyz'.
I have to use UNIX shell scripting for this.

Previously I used to do this activity manuly in vi editor.
I want to automate this.

Somebody told me that i need to use awk/sed programming for this.
I don't know awk programming at all.

Can anybody help me in this?

what have you tried?

Indeed you are asking the program for an editor dude... Upto what extent you have tried....?

I have zero knowledge of awk programming.

Simple shell prog.'s nt working.

So show us the input, the desired output, the script you tried, any error messages and the output.

You can probably easily do this with awk, but we need to see before and after example.

1. You have to state the problem clearly and completely. e.g. Does this mean change each column to "wxyz" or to replace all 4 columns with "wxyz"?

2. What documentation for SED and AWK have you looked at?

Not Linux?? And who says you have to do this?

e.g.

previously, file was like
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
H D R 3 0 1 0 2 0 0 9 1 0 3 0 5 0
D T A 1 0 0 0 5 X 1 0 0 0 0 0 . 5 0
D T A 1 0 2 0 1 X 2 0 0 0 0 0 . 5 0
T R L 3 0 0 0 0 1 . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 4


I say, edit at row 2, col 9-10 location & whatever be the previous data, change it to xy
User I/P would be file name, row num, column from & to, and new val.

Later (after running the script)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
H D R 3 0 1 0 2 0 0 9 1 0 3 0 5 0
D T A 1 0 0 0 x y 1 0 0 0 0 0 . 5 0
D T A 1 0 2 0 1 X 2 0 0 0 0 0 . 5 0
T R L 3 0 0 0 0 1 . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 4

so where's your script that is not working?

OK---but please answer ALL of my questions.....

For example, if you are required to use "UNIX shell scripting" (because it is homework??), then maybe you are not allowed to use SED or AWK.......

Well, the only way I can think of doing this in one easy step is with awk:

The output is:

That's what you wanted right ?

and you have let the cat out of the bag. anyway, since its out, shorter version

the file is not space separated.
the above file is a flat file with nothing called as field.
Though it looks like, bt assume that there are no spaces in the above example, & the data is continuous.

I tried
awk -v r=3 -v c=8 -v val=x 'BEGIN {}; NR != r {print}; NR == r {$c = val; print}' Leena_New

But this treats the file as a space separated file & edits the 8th Field insted of 8th column.

I'm still not sure from your description whether the line you are editing is:
D T A 1 0 0 0 5 X 1 0 0 0 0 0 . 5 0
or
DTA10005x100000.50

When talking about rows you are starting with record 0. When you talk about columns, you start counting with 1.

For "DTA10005x100000.50", you can use sed. It will be easier if you use extended regular expressions. (less escaping)
Use storage registers to save what is before and after the characters to replace.

You could also look at reading each line into a bash array variable and editing the elements.
awk has functions that deal with manipulating substrings.

So there are a number of ways of doing what you want.

using sed:Please try it on a test file before actually using it.