Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 23:47:16 -0700 From: Bill Campbell <freebsd@celestial.com> To: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: sed and comma-delimited file Message-ID: <20060922064716.GA10602@alexis.mi.celestial.com> In-Reply-To: <60472.24.70.153.246.1158901743.squirrel@webmail.sd73.bc.ca> References: <c04d7e300609190926t1e5dce14wea7ef1a16ccf9af1@mail.gmail.com> <54894.192.168.0.10.1158706436.squirrel@webmail.sd73.bc.ca> <002101c6dc46$470b1d50$0000fea9@gsicomp.on.ca> <60472.24.70.153.246.1158901743.squirrel@webmail.sd73.bc.ca>
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On Thu, Sep 21, 2006, Freddie Cash wrote:
>On Tue, September 19, 2006 4:49 pm, Matt Emmerton wrote:
>>> On Tue, September 19, 2006 9:26 am, SigmaX asdf wrote:
>>>> I have a series of comma-delimited text files with fourteen
>>>> columns of data and several hundred rows. I want to use a short
>>>> shell script to strip them of the last 9 columns, leaving the same
>>>> file but with just five of its columns. I can do it in C++, but
>>>> that seems like overkill. How would I go about doing it with sed
>>>> or a similar utility?
>
>>> cat file | awk -F"," '{ printf "%s,%s,%s,%s,%s\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5
>>> }' > newfile
>
>> What's wrong with this?
>> cat file | cut -f-5 -c';' > newfile
>
>[shrug] It uses cut, which I've never used or even heard of??? :)
I strongly recommend getting a copy of the book ``Unix Text
Processing'' by Dougherty and O'Reilly which is far and away the
best I've seen for using UNIX tools. I think it's out of print,
and hard copies are probably found at http://www.bookfinder.com/
There's also a free PDF version available from O'Reilly.
Bill
--
INTERNET: bill@Celestial.COM Bill Campbell; Celestial Systems, Inc.
UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
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URL: http://www.celestial.com/
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for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
-- H.L. Mencken, ``Minority Report''
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