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Help with finding length of a field

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# 1  
Old 12-13-2007
Help with finding length of a field
I have a pipe delimited file. I need to check that the first and second fields are 5 characters long and if not i need to append 0 in front of them to make them 5 characters long. can some body let mwe know how i can find the length of the two fields and then make them 5 characters long if they are not.

e.g:

Quote:
2|251|25G|NY|NY
it needs to be

Quote:
00002|00251|25G|NY|NY
# 2  
Old 12-13-2007
One of the ways:
Code:
echo "2|251|25G|NY|NY"|awk '{printf("%0.5d|%0.5d|",$1,$2);print $3,$4,$5}' FS='|' OFS='|'

# 3  
Old 12-13-2007
Or this one:

Code:
awk 'BEGIN {FS="|"}{printf("%05d|%05d|%s|%s|%s\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5)}' file

Regards
# 4  
Old 12-13-2007
can somebody let me know first how i can print the records that doesnt have 5 characters in the 1st and 2nd fields please?
# 5  
Old 12-13-2007
Code:
nawk ' length($1) != 5 && length($2) != 5' myFile

# 6  
Old 12-13-2007
vgreshh,

its printing everything even when the first and second fields are 5 characters long. something wrong?
# 7  
Old 12-13-2007
sorry - forgot the field seprator
Code:
nawk -F'|' length($1) != 5 || length($2) != 5'

Also yuu probably want to print a records if EITHER one of the fields is not 5 chars long?
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