Use awk to calculate average of column 3 - UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

grossgermany · #1 07-12-2007

Suppose I have 500 files in a directory and I need to Use awk to calculate average of column 3 for each of the file, how would I do that?

grossgermany · #2 07-12-2007

I think the more appropiate question is it retarded to use awk in this scenario? Is there a better way?

lorcan · #3 07-12-2007

Code:

ls -ltr your_directory |awk '{sum+=$5} END { print "Average = ",sum/NR}'

I think awk is more simple for this task

ghostdog74 · #4 07-12-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by lorcan

Code:

ls -ltr your_directory |awk '{sum+=$5} END { print "Average = ",sum/NR}'

I think awk is more simple for this task

i think OP is asking for column3 of inside the file.

Perderabo · #5 07-12-2007

Maybe something like:

Code:

$ (cd awkdir ; ls | while read filename ; do awk '{sum+=$3} END { print "Average for " FILENAME " = ",sum/NR}' $filename ; done)
Average for one =  6
Average for three =  26
Average for two =  16
$

onthetopo · #6 07-27-2007

I think NR isn't the right thing to use, suppose for some lines, field 3 is empty, I think somehow you need an emptiness check and average =s/(NR-numemptylines)

matrixmadhan · #7 07-27-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by onthetopo

I think NR isn't the right thing to use, suppose for some lines, field 3 is empty, I think somehow you need an emptiness check and average =s/(NR-numemptylines)

I think that using just NR is the right approach
as empty values would affect the final average

and the OP had not specified anything about that.

But its good to have a different opinion

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