awk - pattern matching?


 
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# 1  
Old 05-08-2011
awk - pattern matching?

Hello all,
I am trying to sort thru a database and print all the customers whose first names are only four characters. I just want to pull the first name only from the database.

the database records appear like this in file:
Mike Harrington:(510) 548-1278:250:100:175; first is name Mike Harrington, second is his phone number (510) 548-1278, then 250 is his contribution the first month, 100 is his contribution the second month and 175 is his contribution the third month.

I tried $ awk 'length ($1) < 4' customer_list.data

and this outputs the entire customers name, both first and last, and only names three characters long?

I tried $ awk 'length ($1) = 4' customer_list.data

and this gave me a syntax error

I tried $ awk 'length ($1) <5; >3' customer_list. data

and got a syntax error again
# 2  
Old 05-08-2011
You were almost there:
Code:
$ awk 'length ($1) == 4' customer_list.data

# 3  
Old 05-08-2011
Thank u very much!!! I am still getting the whole record though. Is there a way to pull just the first name and output that only? My columns are separated by : I tried $ awk -F: 'length ($1) == 4' customer_list.data and it doesn't return anything at all? Thanks for your help, much appreciated......
# 4  
Old 05-08-2011
Code:
awk 'length ($1) == 4 {print $1}'   customer_list.data

# 5  
Old 05-08-2011
Thank u very much!!
 
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