UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Adapting/correcting your script from post #1:

Code:

awk '
BEGIN            {print "<tr>\n"}
NR>=2 && NR<=4   {print  "<td>"$1"</td><td>"$2"</td><td>"$3"</td>\n"}
END              {print "</tr>" }
' xyz.csv

Moderator's Comments:

Not sure how this thread got here, but it is ill-placed. Going to move it to "Unix for Dummies".

bakunin

Is this a homework assignment? Homework must be posted in the Homework & Coursework Questions Forum and must contain a completely filled output template as described in the Rules for Homework & Coursework Questions Forum. If this is not homework, please explain why you need to gather seemingly random lines from a file! Until we get a clear answer to the above questions, you won't get any more suggestions for a solution to your problem.

I will, however, make a few comments on what we have seen in this thread so far...

Now that I have added CODE tags to post #7 in this thread, we can see:
In your sample input file, the "3rd field" is empty on one line. Is that the only field that can be empty? Besides your "1st field" can any other fields contain <space> or <tab> characters (other than as field separators)?

And, even with the above realizations, I still don't know what you want. Are you trying to create HTML output or are you trying to create aligned text output?