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Shell Programming and Scripting

Can i read a file character by character

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# 1  
Old 11-21-2007
Can i read a file character by character
How to read character by character using awk
# 2  
Old 11-21-2007
Either use fold -1 then pipe into awk, or loop through each character in awk, e.g....
Code:
$ cat file1
abc
$ fold -1 file1 | awk '{print $0}'
a
b
c
$ awk '{for(i=1;i<=length;i++) print substr($0, i, 1)}' file1
a
b
c

# 3  
Old 11-21-2007
What shell? Bash has the `read` builtin where you can do:
Code:
while read -n1 char; do
 #do something with the byte in $char
done <input.file

# 4  
Old 05-16-2008
what is -n1 heere in this syntax
could u explain what is "-n1" here in this syntax

Quote:
Originally Posted by LivinFree
What shell? Bash has the `read` builtin where you can do:
Code:
while read -n1 char; do
 #do something with the byte in $char
done <input.file

# 5  
Old 05-16-2008
Quote:
read -n nchars
Read returns after reading nchars characters rather than
waiting for a complete line of input.
So -n1 means reading character by character.

Regards,
Chella
# 6  
Old 05-19-2008
can u explain it little bit clear
what exactly the "number 1" do in the syntax

if i give 2 what will happen .... does it read 2 chars at a time

can u explain it little bit clear

regards
srikanth
# 7  
Old 05-19-2008
Bash has a manual page and a built-in help system.

Code:
bash$ help read
...
If -n is supplied with a non-zero NCHARS argument, read returns after NCHARS
characters have been read.

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