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awk misreading txt file

 
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Old 09-16-2008
awk misreading txt file
Good morning,

I am having a problem that I have never had before using awk. I have a txt file that obviously has clear columns and records. When I open the file in textedit, or any other program, it looks as it should, but when I check it in awk by printing the whole thing, it considers everything to be on one line. The file was generated on a mac using OS 9, and I am trying to do the scripting work on a system using OS X, Leopard. I would like to add, however, that I have done this EXACT analysis before and there were no problems reading the text file -- I did a preliminary analysis of the data mid-experiment. Now, the experiment is over, and the files are appended with all the more recent trials, so I recollected them using a flash drive and moved them to my main work station for analysis.

I have tried running DOS to Linux on the files, I have copied the text into new files and saved them, even copied into word, saved as .doc, and then exported to txt. I am baffled, and starting to think it is something awry in my awk build. Does anyone have insight into this issue?

PS, if I convert the txt files to rtf files, and then read them with awk, they look ok, except at the end of each line there is a " \ ". I thought I would just use awk to print everything except for the backslash into a new file, but then nothing can read that new file properly EXCEPT awk. I am pretty irritated. Thank you!
 
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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

dpkg-awk

DPKG-AWK(1)						      General Commands Manual						       DPKG-AWK(1)

NAME

       dpkg-awk - Utility to read a dpkg style db file

SYNOPSIS

       dpkg-awk [(-f|--file) filename] [(-d|--debug) ##] [(-s|--sort) list] [(-rs|--rec_sep) ??] '<fieldname>:<regex>' ... -- <out_fieldname> ..

DESCRIPTION

       dpkg-awk  Parses  a  dpkg status file (or other similarly formatted file) and outputs the resulting records.  It can use regex on the field
       values to limit the returned records, it can also be told which fields to output, and it can sort the matched fields.

OPTIONS

       -f filename
       --file filename
	      The file to parse.  The default is /var/lib/dpkg/status.

       -d [#]
       --debug [#]
	      Each time this is specified, it increased the debug level.

       -s field(s)
       --sort field(s)
	      A space or comma separated list of fields to sort on.

       -n field(s)
       --numeric field(s)
	      A space or comma separated list of fields that should be interpreted as numeric in value.

       -rs ??
       --rec_sep ??
	      Output this string at the end of each output paragraph.

       -h
       --help Display some help.

       fieldname
	      The fields from the file, that are matched with the regex given.	The fieldnames are case insensitive.

       out_fieldname
	      The fields from the file, that are output for each record.  If the first field listed begins with ^, then the list  of  fields  that
	      follows will NOT be output.

BUGS

       Be  warned  that  the author has only a shallow understanding of the dpkg packaging system, so there are probably tons of bugs in this pro-
       gram.

       This program comes with no warranties.  If running this program causes fire and brimstone to rain down upon the earth, you will be on  your
       own.

       This program accesses the dpkg database directly in places, querying for data that cannot be gotten via dpkg.

AUTHOR

       Adam Heath <doogie@debian.org>

DEBIAN
								 Debian Utilities						       DPKG-AWK(1)