Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I have another problem here on Bash. Assume I have an output file containing two columns which the second one contains :-

abc`dgdf`sdfdg`
dfgfg```ssd`


I would like to count the "`" characters for each line (which is first column). I am wondering what command can I used other than AWK to calculate these characters for each line.

I tried to use AWK by using if ($2)=="`", count[$1]=count++; however, it doesnt work.

Please advise. Thanks.


-Jason

Code:

awk 'BEGIN {FS="`"} {print $1, NF-1}' file

Regards

Hi franklin,

Thanks for your reply. It works well, but I need to know more about this command. From the Field Separator "`", does that means NF is actually referring to the field separator since we have set only one in the BEGIN loop?

If that is so, if i have other field separator let say '&' or '%' etc..how could I differentiate them using NF since NF to my understanding is referring to number of fields.

Please advise. Thanks.


Rgrds,
Jason

The default fieldseperator of awk is a tab or spaces, which is change here with the BEGIN statement.
The fieldseperator is used as a trick to count the character.
NF is the number of fields of each row so if you have 5 fields there will be 4 fieldseperators.

Regards

Hi Franklin,

I agree with what you explained. But given the fact if I have one line consist of different patterns such as "`" (the one you showed me) and "$".
or even more other patterns,

If that is the case how can I use NF to differentiate these characters.

For your information, my input is a line of statements which is something like below:-

halo`world$$``

If using the method you showed me, we could have one NF tricked one at a time. How could we represent for both patterns in this case.

Please advise. Hope you could get my meaning. Thanks.


-Jason

You can't use more than one fieldseparator in this case, for more characters you should use another method.

Regards

Code:

awk -F'[`$]' ' {print $1, NF-1}' file