Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello

I've question on the requirement I am working on.

We are getting a fixed length file with "33" characters long. We are processing that file loading into DB.

Now some times we are getting a file with "35" characters long. In this case I have to remove two characters (in 22,23 positions) and process the file.

Here is the sample file. I need to remove "20" and process the remaining file.

Can you help achieving this task.I appreciate your help.

Code:

120000111LIFEWELC    20            $
120000222LIFEWELC    20            $
120000333LIFEWELC    20            $
120000444LIFEWELC    20            $

Thanks
Kind Regards
Vpadala

Hi manasvi24,

One way using perl:

Code:

$ perl -lpe 'if ( length == 35 ) { s/\A(.{21}).{2}/$1/ }' infile

Thank you so much for the quick turn around. Is there any way can I achieve this using Unix Awk/Sed.

Once again thanks in advance for your help.

Yes. Very similar using sed:

Code:

$ sed -e '/^.\{35\}$/ s/^\(.\{21\}\).\{2\}/\1/' infile

This is working fine. Thank you so much for helping me. I tried to understand the command.
If you don't mind can you help me understand what are we doing here in detail.

Thanks in Advance
VPadala

Yes.


So, first check if line has exactly 35 characters, and if so, match first 21 characters of the line, saving them in group 1, and next two characters (without saving), and replace all it with content of group 1, so that command will only remove characters 22 and 23.

Thank you much Birei. This is so helpful. I really appreciate your help