string concatenation

systemsb · #1 (**permalink**) 04-03-2006

my input file contains thousands of lines like below

234A dept of education
9788 dept of commerce
8677 dept of engineering

How do i add a delimeter ':' after FIRST 4 CHARACTERS in a line
234A:dept of education
9788:dept of commerce
8677:dept of engineering

blowtorch · #2 (**permalink**) 04-03-2006

Is the pattern of all the lines in the file the same as the three shown here? If yes, this is how you can do it:

Code:

# cat testfile
234A dept of education
9788 dept of commerce
8677 dept of engineering

# while read first rest; do
> echo $first:$rest
> done < testfile
234A:dept of education
9788:dept of commerce
8677:dept of engineering

amro1 · #3 (**permalink**) 04-03-2006

you need awk for it.

systemsb · #4 (**permalink**) 04-04-2006

Can you show me how to do using awk or sed

Yes all the lines are of the same pattern

matrixmadhan · #5 (**permalink**) 04-04-2006

with sed,

Code:

sed 's/\(....\) \(.*\)/\1;\2/' filename

with awk,

Code:

awk '{ 
for(x=1; x<=NF; x++) 
{
if ( x==1 )
{
  printf $x";";
}
else
{
  printf $x" ";
}
}
printf "\n";
}' filename

gauravgoel · #6 (**permalink**) 04-04-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by systemsb

Can you show me how to do using awk or sed

Yes all the lines are of the same pattern

try the following

Quote:

awk '$1=$1":"{print}' filename

Gaurav

matrixmadhan · #7 (**permalink**) 04-04-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by gauravgoel

try the following
awk '$1=$1":"{print}' filename
Gaurav

and for those working on solaris distribution
use nawk instead of awk

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