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Shell Programming and Scripting

How to determine column separation format?

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting How to determine column separation format?
# 8  
Old 10-17-2015
The output is there. Pipe it through hexdump or od.
# 9  
Old 10-17-2015
Although there were no <tab> characters in any of your samples, you could try something like:
Code:
awk '
{	printf("Input is:\n%s\nFormat is:\n", $0)
	gsub(/[^[:space:]]+/, "DATA")
	gsub(/\t/, "<tab>")
	gsub(/ /, "<space>")
	print
}' file

If file contains:
Code:
ABCD      A  L     BBB J HHH     9495994 4458902  HJFGGJK  SDFR 22222  
f1	f2  f3	f4 f5 f6 f7	f8 f9 	 f10

it produces the output:
Code:
Input is:
ABCD      A  L     BBB J HHH     9495994 4458902  HJFGGJK  SDFR 22222  
Format is:
DATA<space><space><space><space><space><space>DATA<space><space>DATA<space><space><space><space><space>DATA<space>DATA<space>DATA<space><space><space><space><space>DATA<space>DATA<space><space>DATA<space><space>DATA<space>DATA<space><space>
Input is:
f1	f2  f3	f4 f5 f6 f7	f8 f9 	 f10
Format is:
DATA<tab>DATA<space><space>DATA<tab>DATA<space>DATA<space>DATA<space>DATA<tab>DATA<space>DATA<space><tab><space>DATA

If you want to try this on a Solaris/SunOS system, change awk to /usr/xpg4/bin/awk.
# 10  
Old 10-17-2015
Brilliant, thank you all.

@DonCragun, why do you say there were no tabs in my sample? I made it with a vi editor, and I actually used a tab separator. Just curious..
# 11  
Old 10-17-2015
Quote:
Originally Posted by la2015
Brilliant, thank you all.

@DonCragun, why do you say there were no tabs in my sample? I made it with a vi editor, and I actually used a tab separator. Just curious..
I say there were no tabs in your sample because the text you included in post #5 and post #7 in this thread did not contain any <tab> characters.

Note that if you copy text from a terminal emulator window in which you are running vi, vi uses spaces instead <tab>s to display <tab> characters. On most systems, if you exit vi and cat the file to the screen, you can then copy the text from your terminal emulator window and paste it into a post on this forum to have <tab>s appear as <tab>s (ass long as you post those sample inside CODE tags).
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