Shell Programming and Scripting

Try something, like this:

Code:

awk -F_ '{A[$1 FS $2]++} END {for (j in A) if (A[j] > 5) printf "%s ",j; print ""}'

The first argument to printf is a format field.

That worked, thanks so much

But while waiting for your reply I also found that if I remove the "," in the printf argument in my original code, so that

Code:

ls | awk -F_ '{A[$1 FS $2]++} END {for (j in A) if (A[j] > 5) printf j " "}'

It worked, which is against I have read in the syntaxing of the awk/printf code. Don't know, something to do with the shell (zsh) I am using or other reason I don't understand.

Yes, in that cat j an " " are concatenated, so printf then uses the resulting string as a single argument. However, I would not recommend using printf with data in the format field.


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Could you please use code tags BTW

I can't seem to get the printf to work probably. For example

Code:

ls | awk -F_ '{A[$1 FS $2]++} END {for (j in A) print j, A[j]}'

would output

Code:

data_1 200
data_2 34

while the equivalent command with printf

Code:

ls | awk -F_ '{A[$1 FS $2]++} END {for (j in A) printf j, A[j]}'

would only output

Code:

data_1data_2

while ignoring the A[j]

The reason why I want to do this is because I want to line up the output nicer, as at the moment for my test directory I am getting (while using the \t key)

Code:

loooooooooger_prefix1     200
shorter_prefix2         34

but I want to get

Code:

loooooooooger_prefix1     200
shorter_prefix2                  34

---------- Post updated at 10:23 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:21 AM ----------

sorry my message format wasnt displayed probably

but I want to output the prefix and the number of files with each prefix aligned in a column. Using the \t doesn't work too well if the prefix has different length.

Like this?

Code:

awk -F_ '{A[$1 FS $2]++} END {for (j in A) if (A[j] > 5) printf "%-30s%5d\n",j, A[j]}'

please use code tags, pyinik..

Thanks it worked.

Apology for the code tag issue.