How can I beautify decimals using "format" or "printf" and "pipe" | command with bash?

For example, I have INTC,12/21/2005,25.8,26.1,25.67,25.81,45877677 as ascii in a text file some_file.txt. I can easily "grep -h intc,12/21/2005 ~/some_file.txt | cut -d, -f2,3,4,5,6", but I want to beautify the output to two decimal places. It's "$..f2" as in printf, but I can't seem to make it work with piped-in input. Formatting a string is easy, I've been told, like pulling on a little innocent string that sticking out at the edge of a seam. Do I need vars like String s = "INTC,..." before I can format? There must be an easier way. I can think of sed and big-guns scripts come to mind.

joe

Hi,

I don't think it is possible to do output formatting using cut, but awk could do this:

grep -h INTC,12/21/2005 some_file.txt | awk -F, '{printf("%s,%.2f,%.2f,%.2f,%.2f\n",$2,$3,$4,$5,$6)}'

Output:

12/21/2005,25.80,26.10,25.67,25.81

And here's an example using awk only (more resource friendly):

awk 'BEGIN { FS=","} /INTC,12\/21\/2005/ { printf("%s,%.2f,%.2f,%.2f,%.2f\n",$2,$3,$4,$5,$6) }' some_file.txt

Output, using your input line:

12/21/2005,25.80,26.10,25.67,25.81

Hope this helps.