Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi, danmero:

I agree. Jairaj's proposed solution is definitely incorrect. However, without some clarification from the original poster, yours could be as well.

If the string being searched must occur in the first ten characters, but can itself be less than 10 characters, it could then occur at different locations within the first 10 characters. If this scenario is a possibility, then

Code:

v==substr($0,1,10)

would be insufficient.

If this is the case, then the following would be the correct approach:

Code:

awk -v v=string 'i=index($0,v){if (i+length(v)-1<=10) print substr($0,11,10)}'

Again, I think the original poster's problem statement is a bit too vague, leaving some wiggle room for this possibility.

Regards,
Alister

This is not about right vs. wrong OR what if suppositions.
The OP ask to "searching the first 10 characters" and that's a fact and we should start from here. Everything else are only suppositions.
I can provide answers/solutions(short) base on facts, otherwise the list will be too long

Regards,
丹 ™

Your solution is incorrect, regardless (as was mine). The problem requested printing characters 11-20 if a match is found; that second substr call returns 11-30 (the third argument is length, not an index). The 20 should be a 10.

Regards,
Alister

That's correct, I fix my original post

Well, Perl scripts are known to be succinct...
For the dummy file below, assuming the search string is the 10 character "helloworld" -

Code:

$
$ cat f2
helloworld>abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
holamundo>abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
helloworld>ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
helloworld>0123456789
bonjourmonde>abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
hallowelt>ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
$
$
$ perl -lne 'print $1 if /^helloworld(.{10})/' f2
>abcdefghi
>ABCDEFGHI
>012345678
$
$

tyler_durden

what is wrong Mr danmero?

Code:

awk '{if (substr($0,1,10) == "helloworld") {print substr($0,11,10)}}'

You don't want to print the record if no match(your else). My mistake , I take the 20 from you see alister comments above.

To simplify we can write

Code:

awk 'substr($0,1,10) == "helloworld" {print substr($0,11,10)}'