Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi Don and Scott,

I apologize for not clearly stating the problem, but say my actual input file contained 14 fields, and I only wanted to print all fields except for 6 and 7. Wouldn't a for loop be better suited to printing the fields I want instead of typing each individual field number?

I am still quite new to bash and awk, so please forgive any lapses in clarification.

Thanks to both of you.

Untested (since you didn't provide any sample input and output), but pretty simple:

Code:

awk '
{	for(i = 1; i < 6; i++)
		printf("%s ", $i)
	for(i = 8; i < 14; i++)
		printf("%s ", $i)
	print $14
}' file

or:

Code:

awk '
{	for(i = 1; i <= NF; i++)
		if(i != 6 && i != 7)
			printf("%s%s", $i, (i == NF) ? "\n" : " ")
}' file

Try

Code:

awk 'NR==1  {MX=split(COLS,C)} {for (i=1; i<=MX; i++) $(C[i])=""; $0=$0; $1=$1}1' COLS="6 7" file

Or perhaps just:

Code:

awk '{$6=$7=x; $0=$0; $1=$1}1'  file

Hi RudiC,

the code works.
one thing I don't understand is:

Code:

$0=$0; $1=$1

I know

Code:

$1=$1

is to rebuild the line with default one space.
what's "$0=$0; $1=$1" mean?

man awk:

Thanks RudiC.