Shell Programming and Scripting

In your example, what could be zip codes is located at character position 114-120 and is thus 7 characters wide, not 9 characters. The are no characters at pos. 149-157. Please clarify what you mean. Also the total length of the last line is one character wider.

Here is another address snippet:

Code:

           JOSE           TORRES            277 URB CRISTAL                                                           AGUADILLA                   PR006036348
MR         SCOTT          ROBBINS           Q21 CALLE LIRIO                                                           ARECIBO                     PR006123368
MR         REINALDO       SANTIAGO          756 CALLE PAZ                                                             ARECIBO                     PR006123533

The example addresses posted previously may have been imperfectly formed, but the char positions that I am looking for are indeed 149-157. Regardless, the code examples would provide enough guidance that even if my char positions were wrong (they aren't) I would be able to make minor modifications to fit the data.

---------- Post updated at 02:06 AM ---------- Previous update was at 01:58 AM ----------

dennis.jacob - Your awk one liner works great!
Just made one tiny modification:

Code:

awk 'NF==1 { ++A[$0] } NF>1 {s=substr($0,149,5)} A[s]' zips dat_file

Because I need to match on the 5 digit zip code, not the 9 digit.

Thanks a lot. Now I will try to unpack this one liner so I can build these in the future.