UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello All,

I have a file with thousands of records:

eg:
|000222|123456987|||||||AARONSON| JOHN P|||PRIMARY |P
|000111|567894521|||||||ATHENS| WILLIAM k|||AAAA|L


Expected:
|000222|123456987|||||||AARONSON| JOHN |P|||PRIMARY |P
|000111|567894521|||||||ATHENS| WILLIAM |k|||AAAA|L

I need pipe to be inserted in the 11th column
john P should be john|p
and william k should be william|k

Please advice.

Code:

sed -e 's/\([A-Za-z]\) \(A-Za-z\)/\1 |\2/g'

And please use [code ][/code ] tags (minus the space) to properly format fixed input/output and commands.

this doesnt seem to be working

What exactly? Does sed report an error? If so, which one? Doesn't the output fit your requirements? If so, specify what goes wrong and what you expect.

The sed command does not modify the result:

the output remains the same:
|000222|123456987|||||||AARONSON| JOHN P|||PRIMARY |P
|000111|567894521|||||||ATHENS| WILLIAM k|||AAAA|L

expected:|000222|123456987|||||||AARONSON| JOHN |P|||PRIMARY |P
|000111|567894521|||||||ATHENS| WILLIAM |k|||AAAA|L

i need a pipe delimiter after john and william. there are many more records ith diffrent name. Actually, john=first name and P=initial. I need to separate these two fields with a pipe.Hope i am more clear.thanks in advance.

Try this:

Code:

awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="|"}
{split($11,a," ");$11=a[1]"|"a[2]}
{print}' file

Regards

hey, it works.
Thank you so much. This has been so informative. thanks a zillion. You rock