UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

Hello All,

First post, don't know much about Linux/Unix, but I need some help. Normally, I do grep 'what I'm searching for' FILE > file.txt so I can pull data from one file, and put it into a new one. The issue I am having is with specific dates, since the date field is 4, and it appears elsewhere in the header, it's pulling more dates than what I need/want. I just want specific date (yyyymmdd format) from one file to be put into another file. Most of the command with awk/sed I have seen (I am still not too familiar with these) are just listing, when I need this in a whole new file.

Thanks in advanced for the help!

Welcome to the forum.

Please be way more specific, supplying sample data containing good and bad examples, if you want more than just generic statements like "Use adequate regex".

My manager was able to help me out on this (was in a meeting) so here was what worked:

Code:

cat FILE | awk -F\| '$4~/^20180202$/' >> fundfile.txt

Thanks, all. This can be closed.

Moderator's Comments:

Please use CODE tags as required by forum rules!

AWK can read a file without the need of cat and it appears that there is no need of a regular expression if you know that the fourth field may only contain the number 20180202

Code:

awk -F\| '$4 == "20180202"' FILE

That will filter every line of FILE, displaying to screen only those that match.
If you want to save the result in a file fundfile.txt and this file doesn't exist or exist but you want to rewrite it, then you can redirect to it

Code:

awk -F\| '$4 == "20180202"' FILE > fundfile.txt

If the file fundfile.txt exist and you do not want to override its content, then you append to it.

Code:

awk -F\| '$4 == "20180202"' FILE >> fundfile.txt