UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello all
I'm writing a ksh script in which I'm stuck. I'm reading from a file whith the following information:
23
0001
0003
0004
0006
4
0000
0004
0005
0006
3
0000
0006
0008
0009
0011
0100

I would like to read in the file and ignore the number with out a preceeding 0 and then search for one number and get the preceeding number. example

I want 0005 which mean I would like 0000 0004 from the second group of number. So my result would be:
0000
0004
0005

I can get the read in file part but suck on how to comapre the values. I thought of using an array and store the value but I don't want to store everything preceeding ie. 23 0001 0003 0004 ....

Any help would be great. THANKS in advance

I'm not exactly sure what you want to pull from the file.. if you want to pull any line out that starts with a zero, you can use:

Code:

sed -n -e '/^0/p' < file2

I kinda get the impression you want to do more, but I don't know exactly what.. maybe if you can explain the problem differently...

Thanks oombera

You're rigth I want to do more. I just don't only want the non zero number but I would like only the nonzero number of the group. Example first group would be: (base on example given)

23
0001
0003
0004
0006

the second group:
4
0000
0004
0005
0006

the thrid group:
3
0000
0006
0008
0009
0011
0100

Now I want number 0005 which is in the second group and its preceeing number in that group .i.e 0004 0000 but not 0006 or any other.

running the script > script_name 0005
will produce
0000
0004
0005

I hope this helps. THANKS for your input.

How about
sed -ne '/^0/p' -e '/0005/q' < inputfile | tail -3

And here I was beginning some big, elaborate script.. I didn't think of taking the output of sed and feeding it back into sed.. wow

The only thing extra that I assumed the OP wanted was possibly to search for other numbers, such as 0003 or 0009, in which case the number in the tail command would have to be changed.. but I guess that depends on what larry wants.

Perderabo was the UNIX.COM poster (Member) of the year in 2002. He is simply amazing!

Neo

Thank Perderabo and oombera

But the group can chage in size example group 2 could be

0000
0001
0003
0004
0005
0006

thus tail 3 would only work if I knew the the total number in that group. But I don't know, like in the above example if I use tail -3 I would only get :

0003
0004
0005

and lose 0001 0000

Thanks again