Shell Programming and Scripting

I made a rash statement yesterday that I could do this easier in Linux than on Windows with VBS but looking at it I'm a bit stuck.

I have a large fixed-width data file auto-generated by a database for printing delivery labels that's full of tags and flags for the printers. I need to compare the account numbers within the file to a list in a second file and add +14D to one of the fields for those accounts found in the list. So a line beginning %2403 needs a flag inserting at position 26(REPLACING 3 spaces to keep the field lengths correct) ONLY where the account number is in the list.

I'm a bit stumped by this one as to the most efficient way to read and compare the 2 files as speed is of the essence here. I'll probably use sed to do the substitutions.

I think what I'm going to look at is since the customer code is the first part of the file name, I'll have a lookup file (a bit like an ini file) with the customer code as the section heading and account codes below it - so for example:

[HLCCK]
123456
654321
789456
987654

[ABCDE]

or

[BBCMY]
3336662,567483,123456

[ZXCVB]

etc

Then all I need do is extract the cust. code from the file name then only look at those few account numbers, but still not sure how to do it. It's been a long time since I've had to do anything like this.

Might be easier to give a sample of say 5 lines from each file if you can.

Using grep along with sed and or awk is probably the way to go.

If you send samples, we can do this easily in a short Python or Perl script.

Basically:

Read check file into an array.

Look through big file, grabbing account # and checking if it's in the array with a hasIndex() function or similar. If found, do a simple replace function or regex.

If you want help with this, send sample files for both and I'll whip something up.

ShawnMilo

The account list will be entries like:

[BBCMY]
3336662,567483,123456

The other text file looks like:

%2403+123336662 +1300050!
%2414+580714KENILWORTH !
%2403+12123456 +1300057!
%2414+580714BIRMINGHAM !

The lines with %2403+12 need to end up looking like:

%2403+1235932 +1300050+14D !

I almost get it, but please send two examples of the exact same lines "before and after." Also, in the check file a single line of comma-separated values?

Sorry

The account list will have 15 or so fields like this (Can be changed):

[TEST]
35932,43906,123456,654321,147258,963852,987654,654321,321012

[BBCMY]
3336662,567483,123456

[XYZ]
564656,84315831,15667

[ABCDE]
3336662,567483,123456

The line to be modified currently look like this:

%2403+1235932 +1304300!

So replacing the "!" with "+14D !"

Not sure now if the no. of spaces after the +14D is important as the "!" is the end of field marker but I can ammend that easily.

Okay, but that still doesn't give me any before-and-after lines. In any case, I should be making you write the code yourself so I don't do your work for you.

Here's a functional but incomplete program that will do something a lot like what you want. Making all the changes are up to you.

This script opens a file and reads the first line, which contains comma-separated values for account numbers. It then loops through the second file and, when it finds one of those account numbers in a set position, it adds "ZZ" after it.

It doesn't preserve fixed-widths for different account number lengths, because I was lazy. But there should be plenty here to get you started.

Changes such as handling header records or having multiple lines with account files to check for I leave up to you. I hope this helps.

ShawnMilo

Code:

#!/usr/bin/env python

#Read a file for a list of numbers
#
#Read a second file and look for those
#numbers in a specific position
#
#If found, replace spaces after that
#position with a pre-set code

account_file = open("test.txt", 'r')

account_list = account_file.readline().rstrip("\n").split(",")

input_file = open("input.txt", 'r')

code = "ZZ"


for line in input_file:

    account_num = line[6:12].rstrip()
    if account_list.__contains__(account_num):
        start = line[0:6]
        end = line[14:19]
        print "%s%s%s%s" % (start, account_num, code, end)
    else:
        print line,