Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi guys,

I have got a file which doesn't have the same number of columns in each line. I would like to print the second column and the one that begins with 33= and has some numbers after '33='

Can you please help me asap?

Cheers

If you want the line to be printed where second column begins with 33
try this
awk ' { if (substr($2,1,2)==33) print $0 } ' filename

if you want to print only that column say print $2

A space/tab is assumed as field separator.
it it is something else
then
awk ' BEGIN {FS="whatever field separator"} {
if (substr($2,1,2)==33) print $0 } ' filename

Thanks, but the thing is that this column that begins with '33=' is not the second column, its number is changing. That's why I have problems with printing it.

Maybe I didn't make it clear. The thing is that each column means answer in questionaire. Each column begins with number of question. There are some questions that could have more than one answer, than there are more columns. I'm intrested in question 1 (column 1) and question 33 (which column number is changing) that is why I would like to print the columns that begin with '33='

why don't you show an example and show your output.

Here's an example:

10049623031 0=43 1=0 2=3 3=3 4=3 4=6 4=7 4=9 5=0 5=1 5=2 5=3 5=5 5=6 5=7 5=12 5=13 5=15 5=18 7=7 8=7 9=7 10=3 11=0 12=0 13=7 14=0 15=0 16=7 17=7 18=4 19=0 20=0 21=1 22=4 23=2 24=0 25=15 26=2 27=2 28=5 29=0 30=0 31=2 32=56 33=6500 34=1 34=2 34=3 34=7 34=8 35=1 35=11 35=16 35=17 1000000=0 1000001=3 1000002=2 1000003=2 1000005=2

108839092 0=33 1=0 2=1 3=4 4=25 5=19 7=9 8=9 9=9 10=9 11=9 12=9 13=9 14=9 15=9 16=9 17=9 18=9 19=0 20=0 21=2 22=5 23=3 24=3 25=22 26=1 27=3 28=12 29=5 30=3 31=0 32=0 33=2300 34=17 35=20 1000000=0 1000001=2 1000002=3 1000003=3 1000005=0

I would like my output to be
10049623031 33=6500
108839092 33=2300

so its not the second column but the first. you said wrongly in your first post.

Code:

awk '{printf "%s ",$1;for(i=2;i<=NF;i++){if ($i~/33=/){print $i}}}' file