UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hey Everybody,

I am having much trouble figuring this out, as I am not really a programmer..

Datafile.txt
Column0 Column1 Column2
ABC DEF xxxGHI

I am running using WGET on a cronjob to grab a datafile, but I need to cut the first three characters from column2 of the file, and save the file. It is Tab-delimited...

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!!! I have been reading tutorials for hours and I just can't get it!

Thanks in advance,
Rick

Oh yea, and I have to make sure I don't run this command on the Column Headers....

With awk:

Code:

awk 'NR>1{print substr($3,1,3)}' file > newfile

Regards

Franklin52,

Thank you for this - it is resolving with the correct conent. However, I am just ending up with a file the extracted content:

AAH
AAJ
AAI
AAL
AAM ...and so on.

I need to re-save the original document with those letters removed from the beginning of Column2 data. Should I do a SED find and replace?

I apologize - I am very new to this...Thanks in advance!

Try this:

Code:

awk 'NR==1{print;next}{$3=substr($3,4)}1' OFS="\t" file > newfile
mv newfile > file

Examine the output of newfile before you replace the original file.

Regards

Hey Franklin,

A strange thing is happening with the output, and I believe it is due to the fact that the columns contain spaces and lots of text.

The script took the spaces in Column0 and made them into new columns, then trimmed the new Column2.

My original data reads like this:

Column 0 is the product name:
"Shure KSM109 Condenser Microphone"

Column 1 is description, which is a paragraph of text:
"The Shure KSM109 offers incredible performance for its price. It combines an extended...."

Column 2 is the Manufacturer code, which needs to be trimmed:
SHUKSM109SL <---(I need to chop SHU)



The output data is looking like this:

Column 0: "Shure"
Column 1: "KSM100"
Column 2: "denser"

So basically it looks like it is treating spaces as tabs. I really appreciate it this help Franklin - thanks so much!

- Rick

I disn't assume that you have spaces in the fields. This should work with spaces in fields:

Code:

awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="\t"}NR==1{print;next}{$3=substr($3,4)}1' file > newfile

Regards