Hi guys,

I have this output, wherein the device is variable and changing values

Device  Identifier        Type   Dir:P
------  ----------------  -----  ----------------
3065    10000000c986cdb0  FIBRE  FA-10A:1
        10000000c9866716  FIBRE  FA-11A:1

symmaskdb -sid $A\ -dev $D list assign | sed -e 's/$D//g' | grep FIBRE | awk '{print $1}'

3065
10000000c9866716

10000000c986cdb0  
10000000c9866716

you don't need grep and awk separately.

try this..

awk '/FIBRE/{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){if($i == "FIBRE"){print $(i-1)}}}' file

 
$ awk '/FIBRE/&&NF==3{print $1;next}/FIBRE/{print $2}' input.txt
10000000c986cdb0
10000000c9866716

awk '/FIBRE/ {print $(NF-2)}' inputfile

for this specific case , searching of FIBRE may solve the issue.
When searching on assignment for multiple devices , there can be devices mapped to SCSI ports or Mainframe ports . This might work better in those cases.

awk '( NR>2) { print $(NF-2) }' filname

great, all of the suggestion works! thanks everyone.

can some one tell me what is NR for in awk? just for my future reference.

from the output above how can i also filter my final output to be like

10000000c986cdb0  10A  1

awk -F'[ -:]' '( NR>2) { print $(NF-6) , $(NF-1) , $NF  }' filename