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printf problem

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# 1  
Old 05-20-2010
printf problem
In one of the scripts I am using pintf function as following

Code:
printf "%s%s%s\n" "$f1" "$f2" "$f3"

f3 variable contains a string of 10 characters. However it has value first 7 character and last 3 characters are empty.

Example

Aaaaaaa<3 spaces>
bbbbbbb<3 spaces>
ccccccc<3 spaces>
ddddddd<3 spaces>

After doing the printf and redirecting to some new file only the first 7 characters of f3 variable are written in new file. Due to this my file is becoming unusable. Is there any way in above printf by which I can print all 10 characters.

I tried the following statement-

Code:
printf "%s%s%10s\n" "$f1" "$f2" "$f3"

but it did not worked.
Moderator's Comments:
Mod Comment Use code tags, please
Last edited by pludi; 05-20-2010 at 03:32 AM..
# 2  
Old 05-20-2010
1) Make sure that you really still have 3 spaces at the end, eg by printing the variable surrounded by some delimiter to stderr.
2) If you want to have the string left aligned, use -10 instead of 10:
Code:
$ printf ">>%10s<<\n" "asdf"
>>      asdf<<
$ printf ">>%-10s<<\n" "asdf"
>>asdf      <<

# 3  
Old 05-20-2010
not working :-(
Code:
while read line
do
f1="$(echo "$line" | cut -c1-18)"
f2="$(echo "$line" | cut -c19-27)"
f3="$(echo "$line" | cut -c28-854)"
 
f2=$(echo "$f2"|sed 's/ /0/g')
 
printf "%s%s%s\n" "$f1" "$f2" "$f3"
 
done < cus.data > newfile

This is my code. The last f3 variable has got spaces at the end. The last 3 characters are null.

However the newfile created is not having those spaces at the end and record length is shrinked to 851 characters.
Last edited by pludi; 05-20-2010 at 04:52 AM..
# 4  
Old 05-20-2010
See, that's why I said make sure that f3 has the spaces at the end itself. It doesn't. read will strip away the contents of $IFS from everything it reads before assigning it to the variable. This should work:
Code:
while IFS='' read line
do
f1=$(echo "$line" | cut -c1-18)
f2=$(echo "$line" | cut -c19-27)
f3=$(echo "$line" | cut -c28-854)

f2=$(echo "$f2"|sed 's/ /0/g')

printf "%s%s%s\n" "$f1" "$f2" "$f3"

done < input.txt > output.txt

This User Gave Thanks to pludi For This Post:
varunrbs
# 5  
Old 05-20-2010
Thanks
Quote:
Originally Posted by pludi
See, that's why I said make sure that f3 has the spaces at the end itself. It doesn't. read will strip away the contents of $IFS from everything it reads before assigning it to the variable. This should work:
Code:
while IFS='' read line
do
f1=$(echo "$line" | cut -c1-18)
f2=$(echo "$line" | cut -c19-27)
f3=$(echo "$line" | cut -c28-854)
 
f2=$(echo "$f2"|sed 's/ /0/g')
 
printf "%s%s%s\n" "$f1" "$f2" "$f3"
 
done < input.txt > output.txt

This worked perfectly. Thanks a lot.
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