Shell Programming and Scripting

Morning, people!

I'd like to call upon your expertise again, this time for a sed endeavor.

I've already searched around the forums, didn't find anything that helped yet.

background: Solaris 9.x, it's a closed system and there are restrictions to what is portable to it. So let's assume I can't just download an updated GNU/POSIX utility.

Alright, so I've been reading some literature on Sed and I'm under the impression that it is somehow possible to embed/inject a newline in the hold space (the string replacing a pattern).

the intent was to double space some reports that we produce on weekly basis for a more eye-friendly format.

So we have a line as follows;
Group User ID Day Week End Reports Compl Hours Logged
analysis azzame Week 25APR09 13 26.0 42.7
analysis campbels Week 25APR09 26 51.2 48.2

basically, I was trying to double space lines conforming to the above format. NOTE** there are spaces in front of the lines for formatting in the actual file

so I tried a sed edit like this:

# sed 's/^ *analysis.*[0-9]$/&\
/' wkending25APR09.txt

inspiration for this comes from the following

https://www.unix.com/shell-programmin...character.html
at the bottom of this post, it appears as though embedding a newline is possible.


also, the following excerpt from the following link:

sed

"A line can be split by substituting a <newline> into it. The application shall escape the <newline> in the replacement by preceding it by a backslash. A substitution shall be considered to have been performed even if the replacement string is identical to the string that it replaces. Any backslash used to alter the default meaning of a subsequent character shall be discarded from the BRE or the replacement before evaluating the BRE or using the replacement."


Let me know your thoughts, i.e. if I'm chasing a ghost any alternatives would be greatly appreciated, I came across something like gsub function in awk?? I guess that might make it possible, however if it's possible in sed I would prefer that method purely to satisfy my knowledge curiosity.

thanks, y'all!!
ProGrammar

is it this your expecting ?..

Code:

 
TESTING>cat sed_ip
Group User ID Day Week End Reports Compl Hours Logged
analysis azzame Week 25APR09 13 26.0 42.7
analysis campbels Week 25APR09 26 51.2 48.2

TESTING> sed '
> /Logged/ a\
>
> ' sed_ip >> op
 
TESTING>cat op
Group User ID Day Week End Reports Compl Hours Logged
 
analysis azzame Week 25APR09 13 26.0 42.7
analysis campbels Week 25APR09 26 51.2 48.2

Panyam,

Thanks for your response. I wasn't really looking to embed a newline after the column headers though.

I was interested in double-spacing the rows of data.

Actually,
I was in Csh when attempting to perform that sed edit, naturally it didn't work.

But then I switched over to Bourne (sh) and the edit worked perfectly as written.

I'm sorry for wasting your time.

I guess an admin can close this thread.

Hi ProGrammar,

I see your Problem ist solved, but in general for better readability of columns, try using printf

Code:

awk '{ printf ( "%15-s %15-s %15-s %10-s %4-s %6-s\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7) }' yourfile

there is just a problem with the header, but this can be solved by replacing not needed spaces by "-" or similar

Code:

sed 's/ /  /g' filename