hello!

I have a file with fixed record length...

format:

123445asdfg 4343777 sfgg

I wanna convert it to

123445,asdfg ,4343,777 ,sfgg

is there any way to do it?

sed/grep/awk??

at the moment I use sed -e 's_ \([^ ]\)_,\1_g'
but it works only if there are spaces between records...

any idea to deal with??

thanks for any help.

it seems you know awk,
so you can use substr function of awk,
do man awk for more details

Gaurav

thanks a lot!

is there a more generic way to do it?
instead of $1/$2....to parse the whole line?
becouse like this I will have to change the script each time I use it for another file.

thanks for any advise.

if you are sure that the no. of characters in the string is going to be constant, then you can first use sed to remove the blank spaces fron it and then use the awk substr() fn to print the required output.

post back if still some confusion
Gaurav

it doesn't solve the problem...

in each file I have to change
substr parameters
instead of substr($1,7,11)" ,"substr($2,1,4)","substr($2,5,7)"

I want substr($the_whole_line,7,11),substr($the_whole_line,12,17)

ls that possible?

thanks.