Convert delimited to fixed length

nelson553011 · #1 (**permalink**) 10-25-2005

Hi, I have to change a tab delimited file to a fixed length file. For text fields I need to left justify and NULL fill to the right and for number fields I need to right justify and zero fill to the left. If there are spaces between words in a text field I need to keep them as spaces. I am using korn shell and AIX. Here is a portion of a flat file that I am working with (First field is text and 12 characters long and second is a number 10 characters long) -
Bob Smith<<tab>>139.90
Kathy Reys<<tab>>-40.50

Here is the output that I need -
Bob Smith 0000139.90
Kathy Reys 0000-40.50

Perderabo · #2 (**permalink**) 10-25-2005

What an odd way to handle negative numbers...

Code:

#! /usr/bin/ksh
typeset -L13 name
typeset -R10 val2
IFS="<<tab>>"
exec < datafile
while read name val ; do
         val2="0000000000000000"$val
         echo "$name $val2"
done
exit 0

nelson553011 · #3 (**permalink**) 10-26-2005

Thanks for that help, that got me most of the way to where I needed. Do you know how to do the NULL padding after the strings instead of space padding? I thought I figured it out with a -Z on the typeset, but it doesn't seem to be working. Thanks again for the help.

Perderabo · #4 (**permalink**) 10-26-2005

Sheesh, what a crazy format. ksh uses strings which are null terminated and this makes working with nulls virtually impossible. We can pad with a substitute character and then translate all occurences of the sunstitute character to nulls as the last operation.

Code:

#! /usr/bin/ksh
typeset -L13 name2
typeset -R10 val2
PAD="%"
NULLS="${PAD}${PAD}${PAD}${PAD}"
NULLS="${NULLS}${NULLS}${NULLS}${NULLS}"
IFS="<<tab>>"
exec < data
while read name val ; do
        val2="00000000000000"$val
        name2=${name}${NULLS}
        echo "$name2 $val2"
done | tr $PAD "\000"
exit 0

nelson553011 · #5 (**permalink**) 10-26-2005

Thanks for your help.

futurelet · #6 (**permalink**) 10-26-2005

Code:

ruby -F\011 -nale'print $F[0].ljust(12,0.chr),$F[1].rjust(10,"0")' file

nelson553011 · #7 (**permalink**) 10-26-2005

I thought I had this figured out, but I'm running into another scenario that I need help with. Do you know how I can fix this if I have no data in a field, <<tab>><<tab>>? What is happening is that it's just going to the next field where there is data and using that, but I need it to use the empty field. Not sure if I explained that well, so here's an example -
Input file - (first field left justified NULL padded (10bytes), second field left justified NULL padded (1 byte), and third field left justified NULL padded (10bytes))
Bob Smith<<tab>><<tab>>Susan Smit
Kathy Reys<<tab>>A<<tab>>Ron Davis

Output file currently getting -
Bob Smith<<NULL>>Susan Smit
Kathy ReysARon Davis<<NULL>>

Needed output -
Bob Smith<<NULL>><<NULL>>Susan Smit
Kathy ReysARonDavis<<NULL>>

Hopefully that makes sense, if not I can try to explain more.
Thanks.

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