Login or Register to Ask a Question and Join Our Community

Sponsored Content
Full Discussion: How to check the number of columns in a line??
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting How to check the number of columns in a line?? Post 302864883 by Little on Thursday 17th of October 2013 09:51:56 AM
Old 10-17-2013
How to check the number of columns in a line??
hi,

i have a file with many records and each record may or may not have 6 columns.
for example

file1 :
Code:
first second third fourth fifth sixth
first second third fourth fifth
first second third fourth fifth sixth
first second third fourth fifth sixth seventh eigth

if i cat the file and read each line using a while loop, and count the number of columns in each line, it takes a long time.

Code:
test=0
cat file1 | while read line
do
    count=`echo $line | sed 's/[^ ]//g' | wc -c`
    if [ $count -ne 6 ]; then
         test=1
         break;
    fi
done

in the above code the loop reads each line 1 by 1 and counts the number of columns. if the file has many lines then it will consume time.

is there a way so that all the lines can be checked at the same time and if any line is having less than 6 columns, set test=1. or any way which consumes less time.
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Shell Programming and Scripting

Appending line number to each line and getting total number of lines

Hello, I need help in appending the line number of each line to the file and also to get the total number of lines. Can somebody please help me. I have a file say: abc def ccc ddd ffff The output should be: Instance1=abc Instance2=def Instance3=ccc Instance4=ddd Instance5=ffff ... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: chiru_h
2 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

Adding a columnfrom a specifit line number to a specific line number

Hi, I have a huge file & I want to add a specific text in column. But I want to add this text from a specific line number to a specific line number & another text in to another range of line numbers. To be more specific: lets say my file has 1000 lines & 4 Columns. I want to add text "Hello"... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: Ezy
2 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

how to get the data from line number 1 to line number 100 of a file

Hi Everybody, I am trying to write a script that will get some perticuler data from a file and redirect to a file. My Question is, I have a Very huge file,In that file I have my required data is started from 25th line and it will ends in 100th line. I know the line numbers, I need to get all... (9 Replies)
Discussion started by: Anji
9 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

perform a check based on number of @ in a log line

Hello, I am intending to perform a check based on number of "@" , present in a line in a log file . The idea is basically to perform a check on cc or bcc sender, based on an email log, which shows all the for email address. Say if the number of @ is more than 30, I will consider it as a mass... (12 Replies)
Discussion started by: fed.linuxgossip
12 Replies

5. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How to read contents of a file from a given line number upto line number again specified by user

Hello Everyone. I am trying to display contains of a file from a specific line to a specific line(let say, from line number 3 to line number 5). For this I got the shell script as shown below: if ; then if ; then tail +$1 $3 | head -n $2 else ... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: grc
5 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

splitting a huge line of file into multiple lines with fixed number of columns

Hi, I have a huge file with a single line. But I want to break that line into lines of with each line having five columns. My file is like this: code: "hi","there","how","are","you?","It","was","great","working","with","you.","hope","to","work","you." I want it like this: code:... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: rajsharma
1 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

How do i find the first number in each line and insert dummy string into the missing columns?

Hi, I have one input file with the following content: MY_inpfile.txt Aname1 Cname1 Cname2 1808 5 Aname2 Cname1 1802 47 Bname1 ? 1819 22 Bname2 Cname1 1784 11 Bname3 1817 9 Zname1 Cname1 1805 59 Zname2 Cname1 Cname2 Cname3 1797 27 Every line in my input file have a 4 digit... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: Szaffy
5 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

Request: How to Parse dynamic SQL query to pad extra columns to match the fixed number of columns

Hello All, I have a requirement in which i will be given a sql query as input in a file with dynamic number of columns. For example some times i will get 5 columns, some times 8 columns etc up to 20 columns. So my requirement is to generate a output query which will have 20 columns all the... (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: vikas_trl
7 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Script to check for a specific number of columns in a file

Hi All I have a file which has five columns in each rows. cat file.txt a|b|c|d|e 1|2|3|4|5 a1|a2|a3|a4|a5 . . . I need to make sure that there are no less than five or more than five columns (in all the rows) by mistake. I tried this : cat file.txt | awk 'BEGIN{FS="|"};{print... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: chatwithsaurav
3 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

Adding columns from 2 files with variable number of columns

I have two files, file1 and file2 who have identical number of rows and columns. However, the script is supposed to be used for for different files and I cannot know the format in advance. Also, the number of columns changes within the file, some rows have more and some less columns (they are... (13 Replies)
Discussion started by: maya3
13 Replies

LEARN ABOUT FREEBSD

tabs

TABS(1) 						    BSD General Commands Manual 						   TABS(1)

NAME

     tabs -- set terminal tabs

SYNOPSIS

     tabs [-n | -a | -a2 | -c | -c2 | -c3 | -f | -p | -s | -u] [+m[n]] [-T type]
     tabs [-T type] [+[n]] n1[,n2,...]

DESCRIPTION

     The tabs utility displays a series of characters that clear the hardware terminal tab settings then initialises tab stops at specified posi-
     tions, and optionally adjusts the margin.

     In the first synopsis form, the tab stops set depend on the command line options used, and may be one of the predefined formats or at regular
     intervals.

     In the second synopsis form, tab stops are set at positions n1, n2, etc.  If a position is preceded by a '+', it is relative to the previous
     position set.  No more than 20 positions may be specified.

     If no tab stops are specified, the ``standard'' UNIX tab width of 8 is used.

     The options are as follows:

     -n      Set a tab stop every n columns.  If n is 0, the tab stops are cleared but no new ones are set.

     -a      Assembler format (columns 1, 10, 16, 36, 72).

     -a2     Assembler format (columns 1, 10, 16, 40, 72).

     -c      COBOL normal format (columns 1, 8, 12, 16, 20, 55)

     -c2     COBOL compact format (columns 1, 6, 10, 14, 49)

     -c3     COBOL compact format (columns 1, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26, 30, 34, 38, 42, 46, 50, 54, 58, 62, 67).

     -f      FORTRAN format (columns 1, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23).

     -p      PL/1 format (columns 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29, 33, 37, 41, 45, 49, 53, 57, 61).

     -s      SNOBOL format (columns 1, 10, 55).

     -u      Assembler format (columns 1, 12, 20, 44).

     +m[n], +[n]
	     Set an n character left margin, or 10 if n is omitted.

     -T type
	     Output escape sequence for the terminal type type.

ENVIRONMENT

     The LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and TERM environment variables affect the execution of tabs as described in environ(7).

     The -T option overrides the setting of the TERM environment variable.  If neither TERM nor the -T option are present, tabs will fail.

EXIT STATUS

     The tabs utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO

     expand(1), stty(1), tput(1), unexpand(1), termcap(5)

STANDARDS

     The tabs utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').

HISTORY

     A tabs utility appeared in PWB UNIX.  This implementation was introduced in FreeBSD 5.0.

BUGS

     The current termcap(5) database does not define the 'ML' (set left soft margin) capability for any terminals.

BSD
								   May 20, 2002 							       BSD
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 02:21 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy