Shell Programming and Scripting

I was wondering if I could use AWK to print from the nth character position to nth for all records in the file.

All I have been doing is printing/copying fields rather than characters. I found a way to print lines greater/less/equal to a character length which led me to believe there is a way to do this in awk.

If this can't be done in awk, then how could it be done?

Thanks!

There is the substr function in AWK, but to be honest your question is slightly vague.

Can you elaborate by showing a sample input and desired output? (using code tags, please )

You can use awk with substr funtion.

Syntax:-

Code:

awk ' { print substr(string, start, length) } '

Scott,

I have been doing this:

Code:

awk '{printf $0; for (i=1;i<=19;i++) printf $4; printf "\n"}' file

This was to print over the 4th field 19 more times, now due to the fact that some records in the file only had 3 fields, it wasn't the best option. I wanted to go with printing lets say from character position 25 to 40 for all lines in the file, as that would be the best option to copy over what I actually need.