Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi there, Ive got a feeling this is quite complex but I have a Comma delimited file which is being transfered up to a mainframe and I have to get every column lining up , I need to add in characters to line it up (but different characters and in different positions based on what field/column it is.

For example here is my original file ......


12345,abcdef,123456789,abcd
123456,abcdef,1234567,abcd

and here is what i need doing ............

1) IF data in field 1 is less than 6 characters long then put enough spaces after the last character to make it up to 6

2) Fields 2 and 4 are fixed at 7 characters and will always be populated by 7 character data

3) IF data in Field 3 is less than 10 characters then place leading zero's in front until 10 characters long

So the end result will look like this...

12345 ,abcdef,0123456789,abcd
123456,abcdef,0001234567,abcd

all lined up lovely for processing

If anybody could give me a few tips on what i would need to do to get started on this and what programs i need to use etc then that would be fantastic

cheers
Gary

Example in ksh -

Code:

#!/bin/ksh
IFS=","
export IFS
while read -r one two three four;
   do
       printf "%6d,%s,%10d,%s\n" "$one" $two"  "$three" "$four"
done <  /path/to/your/inputfile

This will output to the screen and will add your spaces to the begining of the field but it's just an example. I leave it to you to change the printf statement. Check the man page for printf and formats. Or, just send it to those mainframe jockeys and let them do it - or wait for one of the resident awk/sed experts here to give you a one-liner!