Hi ! experts

I would like to understand escape formating in awk, please anyone explain about the same using following datafile

 DATA SET: ./myfile.asc
             TIME: 29-OCT-2011 08:15 to 15-DEC-2011 16:15
             ax: 73.1
             aY: 15.2
             aZ: -8.361
 Column  1: var_1 is xyz (cm/s)
 Column  2: var_2 is axyz (cm/s)
 Column  3: var_3 is abcde (cm/s)
 Column  4: cnst is constant
                            var_1  var_2 var_3  cnst
29-OCT-2011 08:30:00 /    1:   ....   ....   ....  1.000
29-OCT-2011 09:00:00 /    2:   ....   ....   ....  1.000
29-OCT-2011 09:30:00 /    3:   ....   ....   ....  1.000
29-OCT-2011 10:00:00 /    4:   ....   ....   ....  1.000
29-OCT-2011 10:30:00 /    5:   ....   ....   ....  1.000

29-OCT-2011 08:15  15-DEC-2011 16:15 73.1 15.2 -8.361 29-OCT-2011 08:30:00       ....   ....   ....  1.000
29-OCT-2011 08:15  15-DEC-2011 16:15 73.1 15.2 -8.361 29-OCT-2011 09:00:00       ....   ....   ....  1.000
29-OCT-2011 08:15  15-DEC-2011 16:15 73.1 15.2 -8.361 29-OCT-2011 09:30:00       ....   ....   ....  1.000
29-OCT-2011 08:15  15-DEC-2011 16:15 73.1 15.2 -8.361 29-OCT-2011 10:00:00       ....   ....   ....  1.000
29-OCT-2011 08:15  15-DEC-2011 16:15 73.1 15.2 -8.361 29-OCT-2011 10:30:00       ....   ....   ....  1.000

I didn't quite understand what you meant by escape formatting.

But you can produce your expected output using:

awk '
        /TIME:/ {
                        T = $0
                        gsub(/[ \t]*TIME: | to/, x, T)
        }
        /ax:/ {
                        AX = $NF
        }
        /aY:/ {
                        AY = $NF
        }
        /aZ:/ {
                        AZ = $NF
        }
        /^[0-9]/ {
                        R = $0
                        sub(/\/[ \t]*[0-9]*:/, x, R)
                        print T, AX, AY, AZ, R
        }
' datafile

Google is your friend here:-

http://ascii-table.com/ansi-escape-sequences.php

1) Colours:  ......"\033[0;31;40m Some text..."...... Gives '\033' an octal value for character 27, '[' separater for the colours needed, '0' select standard _font_, ';' further separaters, '31' foreground colour, '40' background colour, 'm' notifies that colours and _fonts_ are going to be generated. FG and BG colours have a selection of 8 basic colours

2) Force a print porition: "\033[10;20f Some text..."...... Will position the cursor to 10 lines down and 20 characters across, 'f' here meaning FORCE...

Please mr Yoda explain code..and thanks for informing about wrong title

The code is pretty much straightforward. Here is the explanation:

awk '
        /TIME:/ {                                       # Search pattern: TIME:
                        T = $0                          # If found assign current record: $0 to variable: T
                        gsub(/[ \t]*TIME: | to/, x, T)  # Substitute 0 or more occurrence of space or tab followed by TIME: with null in variable: T
        }                                               # Also Substitute space followed by to with null in variable: T

        /ax:/ {                                         # Search pattern: ax:
                        AX = $NF                        # If found assign last field: $NF to variable: AX
        }

        /aY:/ {                                         # Search pattern: aY:
                        AY = $NF                        # If found assign last field: $NF to variable: AY
        }

        /aZ:/ {                                         # Search pattern: aZ:
                        AZ = $NF                        # If found assign last field: $NF to variable: AZ
        }

        /^[0-9]/ {                                      # Search pattern: ^[0-9] (record starting with digits)
                        R = $0                          # If found assign current record: $0 to variable: R
                        sub(/\/[ \t]*[0-9]*:/, x, R)    # Substitute 0 or more occurrence of space or tab & by 0 or more occurrence of digits with null
                        print T, AX, AY, AZ, R          # Print values of all variables.
        }

' file

Thank you so much Yoda

if suppose pattern say in current example

ax:73.1(73.01)

73.1

echo "ax:73.1(73.01)" | awk ' { gsub(/.*:|\(.*/,x) }1 '