Question

Unix Shell script : cut sed awk sort needed

Asked by: sunhux

I have a file containing lines shown below.

I need a script that will extract out only the first

    doc_id  pages  surface_id_1  surface_id_2
    ------  -----  ------------  ------------
  11595450      2          3527          3212
  11595454      7          3527          3212
  ......
  78299798322  5        3527          3212
^===========
|Only Numbers in this column needed
|
space in first column to be removed

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2009-10-13 at 22:04:06ID24810174
Tags

Unix Shell script : cut sed awk sort

Topics

Shell Scripting

,

Unix Operating Systems

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
11

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. Awk
    I have a long string of text, for example: A12345678917/02/00Mr Smith I need to create an output file with each value on a separate line. The values are either text, numeric or dates etc and are fixed widths. I have tried using awk and substr to select the first 10 charac...
  2. URGENT: sed or awk help
    I need a simple thing done, and while I'm sure sed and/or awk would be the proper tool, I really don't know how to use them yet. I have a DOS text file that has extraneous CR/LF sequences that I want removed. This is an application log file, and these extra CR/LF sequences b...

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: amit_gPosted on 2009-10-13 at 22:10:13ID: 25567409

sed 's/^ *//g' FileName | cut -d" " -f1

 

by: oocytePosted on 2009-10-13 at 22:27:26ID: 25567513

amit_g's solution will include heading and ------

You can try the following if you only want numbers.

awk '{ print $1 }' file.txt | egrep -e '^[0-9]*$'

                                              
1:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: sunhuxPosted on 2009-10-13 at 22:41:30ID: 25567587

Thanks, just to ask 2 last question for this thread:


 awk '{ print $1 }' file.txt | egrep -e '^[0-9]*$' > file1
Note that file1 contains all 8 digit lines.  Next I
need to sort the lines from smallest number to
largest number at the bottom of file.

Next, I need to find out if each of the number in file1
is found in file2 but I ran into problem with following
command (think it's because file2 contains number
that can be from 5 to 9 digits) :
awk '{print $1}' file2 | comm -23 file1 - >file3

as file3 contents is exactly the same as file1.
I did sample check & found that all numbers in
file1 are found in file2.  What I need is for file3
to contain only numbers/lines from file1 that are
NOT found in file2

Suppose I have file2
 

 

by: TintinPosted on 2009-10-13 at 22:41:37ID: 25567591

Assuming you don't want the header, then

awk '/^ *[0-9]/ {print $1}' filename

 

by: oocytePosted on 2009-10-13 at 22:54:17ID: 25567640

I don't really know how comm works, but my ghetto way of finding lines that's in file1, but NOT in file2.

for _line in `cat file1.txt` ; do grep ${_line} file2.txt > /dev/null; if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then echo ${_line} >> file3.txt; fi; done

                                              
1:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: sunhuxPosted on 2009-10-13 at 22:55:15ID: 25567644

Hi Tintin

All the files already don't have header, my problem now is
(let me rephrase as earlier postings was written in a confusing manner) :

I need to find out if each of the number (or line) in file1
is found in file2 but I ran into problem with following
command (think it's because file2 contains number
that can be from 5 to 9 digits) :
awk '{print $1}' file2 | comm -23 file1 - >file3

file3 should contain only lines from file1 that are
not found in file2

 

by: TintinPosted on 2009-10-13 at 23:05:46ID: 25567684

Can you show some example data, where the above doesn't work?

 

by: ghostdog74Posted on 2009-10-14 at 01:34:08ID: 25568268

@oocyte
>>for _line in `cat file1.txt`

don't use cat like this in a for loop because that will break when lines have spaces.

>> awk '{ print $1 }' file.txt | egrep -e '^[0-9]*$'

you can omit grep and just use awk because awk has regex as well


awk '/^[0-9]*$/{ print $1 }' file.txt

 

by: sunhuxPosted on 2009-10-14 at 03:58:08ID: 25569027


Have we considered "substring" in our solutions?

Using oocyte's solution as example,

Eg:
File1:
111
22222
333333

File2:
111111
22222

should not give 111 but only 22222 (though 111 is a substring of 111111)

So

 

by: oocytePosted on 2009-10-14 at 05:04:21ID: 25569493

good point sunhux, I never thought of that.

egrep "^${_line}$" file2.txt

instead of

egrep ${_line} file2.txt

should do it.

 

by: TintinPosted on 2009-10-14 at 14:20:58ID: 25575402

Your descriptions are changing.

You previously said:

"file3 should contain only lines from file1 that are not found in file2"

and in your last example, you are saying it should only display lines that are the same between file1 and file2.

Which is correct?

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...