Hi,
I have the following data in a flat file:
I need to check the no. of occurence of "|" (pipe) on each line and the output should look like below:
where the first line is the no. of occurence of Pipe on each line.

Can anyone help me on this?
Thanks in advance

Use nawk or /usr/xpg4/bin/awk on Solaris.

Hi Radoulov,
Thanks for your reply. It works the way I want.

It might happen the flat file may have irregular no. of columns like below:
abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357
abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357
abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357
abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357|1357|1357
abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357|1357
abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508

If I run your command, it gives me correct output as:
2|abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357
2|abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357
2|abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357
4|abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357|1357|1357
3|abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357|1357
1|abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508

The flat file should contain fixed number of columns, i.e. always 3, but it may also have the possibility of having the above irregular columns.

So I need to find the lines which are having irregular no. of columns, i.e. having <> 3.
Last output required is:
4|abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357|1357|1357
3|abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508|1357|1357
1|abcd_efgh_ijkl_20080522.dat|20080602222508

I hope I am able to provide proper details.
Can I get the solution to the above problem?
Thanks in advance

Hi Radoulov, Thank you very much for your help.