Hi
I ‘m trying to write a simple script that will be able to extract some useful info from a file of this format:

+ 1.84375 0 2 cbr 210 ------- 0 0.0 3.1 225 610
- 1.84375 0 2 cbr 210 ------- 0 0.0 3.1 225 610
r 1.84471 2 1 cbr 210 ------- 1 3.0 1.0 195 600
r 1.84566 2 0 ack 40 ------- 2 3.2 0.1 82 602
+ 1.84566 0 2 tcp 1000 ------- 2 0.1 3.2 102 611
- 1.84566 0 2 tcp 1000 ------- 2 0.1 3.2 102 611
r 1.84609 0 2 cbr 210 ------- 0 0.0 3.1 225 610
+ 1.84609 2 3 cbr 210 ------- 0 0.0 3.1 225 610
d 1.84609 2 3 cbr 210 ------- 0 0.0 3.1 225 610
- 1.8461 2 3 cbr 210 ------- 0 0.0 3.1 192 511
r 1.84612 3 2 cbr 210 ------- 1 3.0 1.0 196 603
+ 1.84612 2 1 cbr 210 ------- 1 3.0 1.0 196 603
- 1.84612 2 1 cbr 210 ------- 1 3.0 1.0 196 603
+ 1.84625 3 2 cbr 210 ------- 1 3.0 1.0 199 612

For example I want to extract the information in column 18-22 but say only the number values (not necessarily all at once).
Using cut utility (i.e. cut –d 18-22 filename) I get

210
210
210
40 -
1000
1000
210
210
210
210
210
210
210
210
But I only need the value without the - character
In other word for each line I need the field value and I cant use [ cut –f ] because there only separated by spaces.
Any ideas or know of a good Unix tutorial for beginners.
Thanks

cut -d" " -f 6 file1 using cut ....

awk -F" " '{ print $6 }' file1 using awk ...

thanks man very useful, but say i wanna add them all together how do i do that ?

awk '
BEGIN { sum=0 ; } { sum+=$1 } END { print sum }' x


where x contains all these numbers.

many megabits
thx

I am new to awk.

Bhargav, how do you get those numbers stored in variable x?
Because I am on track something similar to this, where I am interested in numbers in a line present at even location.

And this array x need to be populated with unique values.

Also, please feel free to suggest me good links to start with learning awk & sed. So far to my observation they are powerful in terms of their usage in shell script.

x is the file there from previous o/p.
redirect previous awk to file "x" as follows

awk -F" " '{ print $6 }' file1 > x

and continue with next step ....

awk '
BEGIN { sum=0 ; } { sum+=$1 } END { print sum }' x

I have file somewhat like below,

xxxxxxx:1111:ssssss:2222:yyyyyyyy
xxxxxxx:3333:ssssss:4444:yyyyyyyy
xxxxxxx:3333:ssssss:5555:yyyyyyyy:6666:zzzzzzzz

Out of which I am interested in fields in 'even' locations after delimiting
by char ":".
With following command, I know I can get field at 2nd loc.
awk -F":" '{ print $2 }' BReject > rows

How to loop thr the row to get value at 2nd, 4th ... fields till end of line,
for each particular row?

Use NF to know the number of fields for each line
But in yr case following works ...


awk -F":" '{ print $2,$4,$6,$8 }' testfile

generic code this time ....


awk -F":" '{
for (i=1; i<= NF; i++)
{
if (i%2 == 0) { printf("%s\t", $i) }
if ( i == 1 ) { printf ("\n") }
}
}' testfile