[wplug] awk help

[Gary Morrow]

<obligatory Larry Wall quote>
: I've tried (in vi) "g/[a-z]\n[a-z]/s//_/"...but that doesn't
: cut it. Any ideas? (I take it that it may be a two-pass sort of solution).
In the first pass, install perl. :-)

                        --- Larry Wall <6849 at jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> 
</obligatory Larry Wall quote>

I would just go ahead and learn a little Perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl

open(FILE,"$ARGV[0]") || die "Could not read $ARGV[0]";

while ( <FILE> ) {

	@line = split(/\"/,$_);    # first split the line on quotes
	$quote = 0;                # set a toggle for whether we're in a quote section or not

	foreach $qpart ( @line ) {

		if ( $quote ) {
			# if we're in a quote section just print it
			print "\"$qpart\"";
			$quote = 0;
		} else {
			# if we're not, split on commas and print the parts
			@parts = split(/\,/,$qpart);
			foreach $part ( @parts ) {
				print "$part\n";
			}
			$quote = 1;
		}

	}

}

close FILE;


 >cat xxx.dat
"first, field test",some,text,"is, in",here

 >perl ptest xxx.dat
"first, field test"
some
text
"is, in"
here
 
It may get a little wierd if you start a quoted section and never close it, but other than
that it should work.

Gary

chris.romano at verizon.net wrote:
>>From: duncanhutty at comcast.net
>>Date: 2004/08/27 Fri PM 04:48:01 EDT
>>To: General user list <wplug at wplug.org>
>>Subject: [SPAM] Re: [wplug] awk help
>>
>>How about:
>>First apply a sed transformation to say that any instance of a comma *inside quotes* were converted to a (pick a suitable escape sequence) and then send it through your awk and then convert all instances of that prior escape sequence back to a commas again.
>>1st sed command:
>>/".*"/s/,/\\,/g
>>
>>Duncan Hutty
>>-------------- Original message -------------- 
>>
>>
>>>I am having some issues with parsing a file using awk. I am not sure if awk is 
>>>the best tool, but I do not know perl at all. I have a comma delimited file 
>>>that has a few fields quoted. In those quoted fields there are commas. So when 
>>>awk process those fields it thinks that they are seperate and not one string. 
>>>i.e. 
>>>
>>>some,text,"is, in",here 
>>>
>>>
>>>awk spits out: 
>>>some 
>>>text 
>>>"is 
>>>in" 
>>>here 
>>>
>>>I want it to be 
>>>some 
>>>text 
>>>is, in 
>>>here 
>>>
>>>my awk command is: 
>>>`cat $1 | awk 'BEGIN{FS=","}{print 
>>>$1","$3",\""$5"\",\""$6"\","$7","$8","$9","$46","$49}' > output.trans` 
> 
> 
> 
> That did not work.  Unless I am reading that wrong.
> 
> sed /".*"/s/,/\\,/g filename > output
> tried ...
> sed /".*"/s/,/\:/g filename > output (changes all "," to ":")
> sed /".*"/s/,/\\:/g filename > output (changes all "," to ":")
> I will try to mess with sed though.  That is a good idea.
> 
> Thanks,
> Chris
> 
> _______________________________________________
> wplug mailing list
> wplug at wplug.org
> http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug
> 

-- 
Gary Morrow
UNIX Systems Engineering and CASE Tools.
Ansys Inc.
gary.morrow at ansys.com
Phone: 724-514-2978
Fax: 724.514.3117
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