cut add characters


 
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# 1  
Old 04-14-2012
cut add characters

i have following fixed width text(also has a delimiter)
Code:
id;name;age;comments1;comments2;title;date
to get output as
id;name;age;;;title;date (remove comments but keep the delimiter in between)
i use cut -c1-12,22,32-

suppose if i want to insert another ; somewhere like
Code:
id;name;age;;;;title;date

(extra colon before title)
i tried using
Code:
cut -c1-12,22,22,32-

i still get same output as 1st. (even if i replace 22 with other position that has ; say 3)
can we do it using cut? i tried to do it using awk and substrings and would like to know if can do with cut

Thanks
Moderator's Comments:
Mod Comment How to use code tags

Last edited by Scrutinizer; 04-14-2012 at 05:37 PM..
# 2  
Old 04-14-2012
Hi,
are You sure You don't want to use -f (field) instead?
for example
Code:
cut -d";" -f1,2,3 < file

and so on would give You Your output, including the separators and will also accept fields of different lenght. But if You introduce an extra field, an extra semicolon, that will of course affect Your arguments to cut.

Best regards, Lakris
# 3  
Old 04-14-2012
Cut cannot do this. Try:
Code:
awk '{$4=$5=x}1' FS=\; OFS=\; infile

# 4  
Old 04-16-2012
order of chars

Sorry didn't mention earlier, the comments fields may contain the delimiter ; the reason why Iam using cut.
I guess cut cant do this. Im using
Code:
awk '{ print substr($0,1,12)";;"substr($0,32)}'

One thing I observed with cut is
Code:
cut -c4-10,1-2,12-15

gives same output as
Code:
cut -c1-2,4-10,12-15

and cut performance is bad when used in loop. awk performed well even when used in loop. But the cut command syntax was simpler, the reason I was trying for a solution with it.
Thanks for your replies
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