Question

awk one liner help

Asked by: aflat362

I'm new to awk.  I'd like to have an awk program that does the following:

processes an input file
looks for lines in the input file that have a form feed character that is NOT preceeded by a newline character
regular expression for this:  /[^\n]\f/

If there is no matching pattern, simply write the current line to an output file.

If there is a matching pattern, insert a newline character before the form feed character and then write to same output file.

for reference, \f is a form feed character which is hex '0C'  the newline character I want to insert is a CRLF or hex '0D 0A'

I know the basic syntax of an awk command and here's kind of what I want to do:

awk 'program' inputfile.txt > outputfile.txt

I have tested the regular expression - I just need help putting the syntax together for the "program" part of it
to do what I described above.

Thanks!

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Asked On
2006-10-17 at 10:26:17ID22027696
Tags

awk

,

liner

,

insert

,

newline

,

one

Topic

Programming Languages

Participating Experts
1
Points
125
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: aflat362Posted on 2006-10-17 at 10:33:34ID: 17749943

Here's a command that's close to doing what I want

awk '/[^\n]\f/ {????????}; !/[^\n]\f/ {print $0}; ' input.txt > output.txt


THe ??? part needs to be finished.  It needs to take the current line $0 and insert a \n before the \f

 

by: ozoPosted on 2006-10-17 at 10:45:57ID: 17750096

awk '/[^\n]\f/{gsub("\f","\n\r\f")}{print}' input.txt > output.txt

 

by: aflat362Posted on 2006-10-17 at 10:48:10ID: 17750118

Nevermind all - I think I have it figured out.  Solution:

awk '/[^\n]\f/ {split($0,a,"\f"); print a[0] "\n" a[1]}; !/[^\n]\f/ {print $0};' input.txt > output.txt

horray for awk.

 

by: aflat362Posted on 2006-10-17 at 10:50:47ID: 17750139

ozo - thanks for the post

for your solution it looks like it only handles lines that actually match my pattern and ignores ones that don't

However, since I'm feeling generous and you showed me a new method (new to me since I've just started with awk) gsub

I'll award you the points.  Good day.

 

by: aflat362Posted on 2006-10-17 at 11:51:44ID: 17750700

correction on my solution.  this is exactly what I wanted to do here.

I applied the sweet new gsub method that ozo showed me.  I switched the \n\r to \r\n to produce desired CR LF

awk '/[^\n]\f/ {gsub("\f","\r\n\f");}; !/[^\n]\f/ {print $0};' test_input.txt > test_output.txt

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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