Shell Programming and Scripting

SkySmart,
I have yet to see a clear definition of what the submitter wants to be matched by the patterns given. For example, with the following input:

Code:

error open
open database
database fail
fail accepted
		if ($i ~ "(error|fail|panic|open database|accepted)")
accepted error

error, fail, panic, open database, accepted.
error123 error456:error789
error error error

should error match error|, error,, and error123 as well as when error is at the start or end of a line and when it is preceded and followed by whitespace characters. The following seems to do what is wanted if all of the above are supposed to match:

Code:

strvar="error|fail|panic|open database|accepted"
awk -v patlist="$strvar" '
BEGIN {	npat = split(patlist, pl, "[|]")
	for(i = 1; i <= npat; i++)
		pat[i] = "(^|[^[:alpha:]])" pl[i] "([^[:alpha:]]|$)"
		# for(i=1; i <= npat; i++)
		#	printf("pl[%d]=%s, pat[%d]=%s\n", i, pl[i], i, pat[i])
}
$0 ~ patlist {	# printf("NR=%d, $0=%s\n", NR, $0)
	for(i = 1; i <= npat; i++) {
		a[i] += gsub(pat[i], "&")
		# printf("a[%s] = %d (for %s)\n",  i, a[i], pl[i])
	}
}
END {	for(i = 1; i <= npat; i++)
		printf("%s=%s\n", pl[i], a[i])
}' file

If you don't want to match 123error and error123, change both occurrences of :alpha: in the code above to :alnum:.

The the vast majority of your input lines will contain one or more of your search patterns, this will probably run faster if you remove the code shown in red.

With the above sample input file, this script produces the output:

Code:

error=9
fail=4
panic=2
open database=3
accepted=4

You also have yet to explain why your script was eliminating line 1 and lines 128501 and above from your input file. Until we know what is special about these lines and what is on them, we won't be able to help you make adjustments to these awk and egrep commands to solve your problem. I agree with Chubler_XL that egrep looks like a better solution than awk, but depending on what you're trying to match, the ERE operand may need to be significantly modified and the -w option removed before invoking egrep. Furthermore, if some lines do need to be treated specially, awk becomes more attractive.

thanks everyone. this has now been resolved. i took bits and pieces from every single post in here to get what i want.


thank you guys!