Red Hat

In a correctly working awk utility, length($0) returns the number of (single-byte or multi-byte) characters in that line (not including the terminating <newline> character).

In some (buggy) awk utilities, length($0) returns the number of bytes in that line (not including the terminating <newline> character). On these systems, substr(string, start, count) may return a substring of string that is unusable because it does not start and/or end on a character boundary.

On a correctly working awk when using a locale based on a UTF-8 codeset, the command:

Code:

awk 'BEGIN{print "Vía", length("Vía");print "Via", length("Via")}'

will print:

Code:

Vía 3
Via 3

while a buggy version might print:

Code:

Vía 4
Via 3

Note also that fixed length lines can, mean several things: Fixed number of characters per line and fixed number of bytes per line are the most common two meanings. In ASCII and other single-byte/character codesets, a fixed number of characters per line and a fixed number of bytes per line happen to be the same thing. With codesets like UTF-8, a character can be represented by one to six bytes. You can also have a fixed number of display columns per line which can be different from both of the above with some characters even having a variable width (such as <tab> typically takes 1 to 8 display columns but can be even more depending on how tab stops are set). And, on displays with proportional width fonts, every character can have a different (and sometimes variable) column width (both for characters like <tab> and due to kerning effects).

Hi RudiC,

somehow your solution is resolved issue but i am not able to accommodate your solution in my code could you help on this as code in my 1st post.

Thanks..

Not sure about what your request is. If it has to do with the error on Linux, please attach a reasonable part of your input file to your next post. If not, state more precisely what you're after.

Hi RudiC,
Please find the script and the data file in attachments which i have changed from fixed width to pipe delimiter.
I have execute this script as below command:
awk -f split_files.awk Z1GALILEO-ZOR-RECV

change the extension of the file due to facing issue while uploading the attachments.

Your script works out of the box and yields

Code:

H7216152960|70R865931021|70  |999| OPN ID69                               |20141117171817|T1|ZOR |700016901 |4791032964                                    |BVOM.ES@HP.COM         
D70R865931021|0100|  01|  |AJ716B              |000010| PGI TP25                                                   |      48|      48|       0|        |4856|1Y|8OCZ|ZB04|8O00|952|
A70R865931021|0100|  01|TB-ADV  |  |        |        |0001|        
A70R865931021|0100|  01|20141125|  |20141125|20141204|0002|      48
D70R865931021|0200|  01|  |HA115A1             |000020| OPN                                                        |       1|       1|       0|        |5060|UW|7000|ZTDI|    |000|
D
etc.

, no errors. Your input file has some locale-dependent chars in it, though:

Code:

file /tmp/Z1GALILEO-ZOR-RECV.txt 
/tmp/Z1GALILEO-ZOR-RECV.txt: ISO-8859 text, with very long lines

You might want to eliminate/convert those with e.g. iconv or recode.