Shell Programming and Scripting

In a shell script I am replacing the asterisks in a file:

Code:

sed "s/\*/"0"/g" /home/download/$COMPANY_CODE/file_new > /home/download/$COMPANY_CODE/file

I need to log which positions were replaced & position(01:20) from the line it was replaced in. I am not sure how to do so. Also, instead of replacing all of the asterisks in a file, how can I just replace the asterisks in the file of the columns I am sure need replaced:
position(1050:1059) & position(1249:1258)
And still log it?

Are the character positions in the file you are processing numbered with the 1st character on a line being position 0 or position 1?

How big is your input file (/home/download/$COMPANY_CODE/file_new)?

What operating system are you using?

What shell (including release/version number) are you using?

Please show us (or attach) a few sample input lines and the exact output(s) you want to produce from that input.

The first position used is 01.
File is 22,000 KB.

Code:

AIX server 1 6 00F7E54B4C00
  
      PID    TTY STAT  TIME COMMAND
 19399110 pts/53 A     0:00 -sh

the lines will contain characters, numbers, spaces all through position 1444. Occasionally position(1050:1059) & position(1249:1258) will contain asterisks "**********". I want to convert those to zeros "0000000000". I don't want to convert any other asterisks that may be in the file. These cause issues due to a sql loader trying to insert them into Oracle tables on a numeric field.

I cannot attach actual data.

Sample input lines do not need to be actual data; they just need to provide representative data.

Are these text files (no null bytes and a <newline> character at the end of each line) or are they binary files (may contain null bytes, for example in floating point numeric constants, and record length is determined by byte count only instead of containing a line terminating character sequence)?

What codeset is used to encode data in these files? (Perhaps ASCII, ISO-8859-1, UTF-8, or EBCDIC?)

In your 1st post in this thread, you said:
If you want a log (in addition to an output file that is a modified version of the input file), exactly what do you want logged? Please show us a sample of what a log should look like for a particular set of representative sample input records.

Please help us help you. Don't make us guess at everything that will determine what tools can be used to process your data to get the results you want! Making us guess at everything wastes the time of anyone who wants to help you, is likely to get you suggestions that don't stand a chance of working with your real data, and makes it much less likely that you will get any suggestions that work in your environment.

I have attached a sample document. I believe it is ASCII. I've attached it as txt but it is a dat file written in pervasive psql. Best way to view the file is with Ultra Edit.
I need to replace the "**********" with "0000000000" but only when it occurs in position(1050:1059) & position(1249:1258). The other asterisks can stay in the file. After replacing the asterisks this file gets loaded in to Oracle. I need to write to a log the position(01:20) from the line it was replaced in. So in this sample line 13 position 1249:1258 will get replaced. After replacing the asterisks, it needs to write "2y102330" to a log file. The shell script the replace command will be contained in is already creating a log file so maybe just an echo command to show which customers were updated. Echo "position(01:20)" output = "2y102330". I am not sure though.

OK. So to be clear, you have a sample input file containing 1,587 lines each containing 1,602 bytes with DOS (<CR><NL>) line terminators and one incomplete line of 1,600 bytes with no line terminator. By definition, as you said, that is not a text file.

Can the modified output from your SAMPLE.txt input file be a real text file, or does the output have to have the same unterminated, trailing partial line?

Does the output file have to use DOS line terminators, or can we change them to UNIX (<NL>) line terminators?

Are you really unable to specify the format of the output you want to produce for the log file that records fields that were changed from containing ********** to containing 0000000000?

The last line should be complete & include a line terminator. The actual file to be updated is ~ 14,087 lines depending on the number of customers. The output file can be the same format as the input. The output file just gets loaded into Oracle using SQL LOADER. For the output I do want the reference of position(01:20) from each line changed. Thanks for your assistance.