Hi,

I have string like this:

CHECK (VALUE::text = ANY (ARRAY['ACTIVE'::character varying::text, 'INACTIVE'::character varying::text, 'DELETED'::character varying::text]))

and I am trying to get out the words in apostrophes (').
In this case"ACTIVE INACTIVE DELETE"

Also the array may consist of one or more words (in given example 3). Also instead of word it can be only one LETTER.

And test I am trying to get ridge in this example can also vary. So the apostrophes are the only thing to consider I guess.

Can someone help me?

This line will generate the output you want:

awk -F "'" '{for (i=2;i<=NF;i+=2) {printf $i" "}; print ""}' file_with_text

echo $string | awk -F\' '{for(i=2;i<NF;i+=2)print $i}'

perl -lane '@arr = /\047(\w+)\047/g}{print for @arr' a

 
ACTIVE
INACTIVE
DELETED

Thank you for all your replies. I will go with the awk one since it is faster. One more question. Since you provided awk and perl solution, does it mean that this cannot be done in sed?