Help with extracting strings from a file

cmsdelhi · #1 (**permalink**) 01-12-2007

I want to collect the characters from 1-10 and 20-30 from each line of the file and take them in a file in the following format.Can someone help me with this :

string1,string2
string1,string2
string1,string2
:
:
:
:

maheshwin · #2 (**permalink**) 01-12-2007

yea

use cut and paste command

cut -c1-10 filename > temp1
cut -c20-30 filename > temp2

paste temp1 temp2 > final

or
can use sed also

anbu23 · #3 (**permalink**) 01-12-2007

Code:

sed "s/\(.\{10\}\).\{9\}\(.\{10\}\).*/\1,\2/" file

matrixmadhan · #4 (**permalink**) 01-12-2007

Code:

awk '{ printf "%s,%s\n", substr($0, 1, 10), substr($0, 20, 30) }' filename

maheshwin · #5 (**permalink**) 01-12-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by matrixmadhan

Code:

awk '{ printf "%s,%s\n", substr($0, 1, 10), substr($0, 20, 30) }' filename

the above script may give other output if we have spaces or blank lines, so better would be to use cut and paste command or the above sed script is again a correct one for your search

matrixmadhan · #6 (**permalink**) 01-12-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by maheshwin

the above script may give other output if we have spaces or blank lines, so better would be to use cut and paste command or the above sed script is again a correct one for your search

You are right, it will have a "," if there are blank lines

this would solve that,

Code:

awk ' { if( length($0) > 0 ) {printf "%s,%s\n", substr($0, 10, 20), substr($0, 20, 30) } }' filename

What if there are spaces? I dont get that really! Could you please explain?

ghostdog74 · #7 (**permalink**) 01-12-2007

If you have Python, here's an alternative:

Code:

o = open("newfile","a")
for line in open("input"):
    o.write( "%s , %s\n" % (line[0:10] , line[19:30] ) )
o.close()

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