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How to preserve spaces in input fields with awk?

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# 1  
Old 11-08-2013
Blade How to preserve spaces in input fields with awk?
I'm trying to do something pretty simple but its appears more complicated than expected... I've lines in a text file, separated by the comma and that I want to output to another file, without the first field.

Input file:
Code:
file1,item,      12345678
file2,item,      12345678
file2,item,      12345678

In output I've got the following:
Code:
,item, 12345678
,item, 12345678
,item, 12345678

As you can see the spaces before 12345678 are kind of merged into one space only.

My code:
Code:
cat myfile | while read l_line
   do
      v_OutputFile=$(echo $l_line | awk -F',' '{print $1}')
      echo $(echo $l_line | awk -F',' '{OFS = ",";$1=""; print $0}') >> ${v_OutputFile}
   done

The issue seems to come from the echo command that removes the spaces. If I do an echo with the quotes it works well. For instance:
Code:
echo 'file1,item,          12345678' | awk -F, -v OFS="," '{$1="";print $0}'

But I could not find a solution to work this out with the while loop. Even by putting the quotes in my input file, it stills removes the spaces.

Thanks for your help !
# 2  
Old 11-08-2013
Look here and ff. ( entire thread )
# 3  
Old 11-08-2013
Try the awk script below...
Code:
awk -F"[ ]" '{s="";n=split($1,a,",");for(i=2;i<=n;i++) s = s ? s","a[i] : ","a[i];$1=s;print}' file

# 4  
Old 11-08-2013
Putting the quotes at the right places will make it work:
Code:
cat file | while read l_line; do echo "$(echo "$l_line" | awk -F',' '{OFS = ",";$1=""; print $0}')"; done
,item,      12345678
,item,      12345678
,item,      12345678

This User Gave Thanks to RudiC For This Post:
shamrock
# 5  
Old 11-08-2013
Ok to use the printf but I still have to use the echo command so I assume it will still remove the spaces no ?

---------- Post updated at 01:16 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:44 PM ----------

Quote:
Originally Posted by RudiC
Putting the quotes at the right places will make it work:
Code:
cat file | while read l_line; do echo "$(echo "$l_line" | awk -F',' '{OFS = ",";$1=""; print $0}')"; done
,item,      12345678
,item,      12345678
,item,      12345678

mmmhh yeah it does the trick. Don't know what I did wrong at the first place because I tried to do the same but I probably put the quotes badly.
Thanks for this simple workaround !

---------- Post updated at 01:17 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:16 PM ----------

Quote:
Originally Posted by shamrock
Try the awk script below...
Code:
awk -F"[ ]" '{s="";n=split($1,a,",");for(i=2;i<=n;i++) s = s ? s","a[i] : ","a[i];$1=s;print}' file

Thanks Shamrock it's a nice piece of code. I assume it's more powerfull to use such a syntax so maybe I'll integrate it into my script.
# 6  
Old 11-08-2013
Actually code posted by RudiC is far better than what I posted with the exception of the cat...so here's my version of the awk posted by RudiC...
Code:
awk -F"," '{$1="";OFS=",";print}' file

# 7  
Old 11-08-2013
In sed:
Code:
echo "file1,item,      12345678" | sed -e 's/^\([^,]*\)//'
,item,      12345678
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