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Need help on getting the first few characters of a file.

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# 1  
Old 06-17-2010
Need help on getting the first few characters of a file.
Friends ,
I need some help in writing a shell script to get the first few characters from a file for all the lines in that file.

Here is sample data inthe file.
Code:
9 JACOBS 0175 
10 VENDOR_0175 
11 JACOBS 0175 
100 0175

I want the ouput as
Code:
9,10,11,100

It doesn't have any fixed length,the only thing I can say is the first I need all the caracters until it first hits 2 spaces from each line in the file.
Last edited by Scott; 06-17-2010 at 01:57 PM.. Reason: Code tags, please...
# 2  
Old 06-17-2010
Code:
$ cut -f1 -d\  file1 | paste -sd, -
9,10,11,100

This User Gave Thanks to Scott For This Post:
srini02
# 3  
Old 06-17-2010
Code:
#!/bin/ksh or dash
# first
while read one xstr
do
     printf "%s," $one
done
echo

Using example:
Code:
chmod a+rx first
cat somefile | ./first  > result.txt

This User Gave Thanks to kshji For This Post:
srini02
# 4  
Old 06-17-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by scottn
Code:
$ cut -f1 -d\  file1 | paste -sd, -
9,10,11,100

Scott ,
It worked awesome.
Thanks you so much .
But, can you please explain what exactly the syntax means?
# 5  
Old 06-17-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by srini02
Scott ,
It worked awesome.
Thanks you so much .
But, can you please explain what exactly the syntax means?
Hi.

Perhaps this is a bit clearer:
Code:
cut -f1 -d" " file1 | paste -sd, -

It "cuts" the first field (-f1) from the file file1 using a delimeter of space (-d" "), then pipes this to the paste command which concatenates (-s) the lines together with a delimeter of a comma (-d,) using the file - (standard input) (i.e. the output of the cut command).
This User Gave Thanks to Scott For This Post:
srini02
# 6  
Old 06-17-2010
Code:
$
$ cat f6
9 JACOBS 0175
10 VENDOR_0175
11 JACOBS 0175
100 0175
$
$ awk '{x = x","$1} END{print substr(x,2)}' f6
9,10,11,100
$

tyler_durden
This User Gave Thanks to durden_tyler For This Post:
srini02
# 7  
Old 06-20-2010
suppose ' abc ' is the file name containing all the data then

Code:
cut -d" " -f1 abc |n paste -s d","

Last edited by radoulov; 06-20-2010 at 11:40 AM.. Reason: Please use code tags!
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