UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I have file on below pattern, and i want to write a generic awk to handle all cases.

input_file:
col1~col2~col3~col4~col5~col6

I need to generate 4 files something like this
File1:
col1~~col2~~col3

File2:
col1~~col2~~col4

File3:
col1~~col2~~col5

File4:
col1~~col2~~col6

I have written

Code:

nawk -v ff=$column_no -F'~' 'BEGIN { OFS="~~"} { print $1,$2,ff > "'$out_file_name'" } ' input_file

I have written above awk under for loop so that this column_no get incremented everytime, so that it picks up different colum for each iteration. [[ and also out_file_name variable get changed in each iteration]]

when i execute this, I get output as

File 1:
col1~~col2~~3 <== prints number "3" instead of picking thrid column value from the input file.

[[ Same thing for all the files ]]

Am i overlooking awk to achieve my request? Pls correct me if doing something wrong or sytax problem.

I knew it can be achieved by writting 4times. But my actual case it is more than 12. So thought of writting professional way, to handle all possible cases.

Kind Regards,
Balaji.

Note I tried another approach also

Code:

nawk -F'~' 'BEGIN { OFS="~~"} { print $1,$2,"'$column_no'" > "'$out_file_name'" } ' input_file

but hasnt pass syntax validation.

---------- Post updated at 11:06 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:31 AM ----------

I have acheived through below code.

Code:

cut -d'~' -f 1,2,$column_no input_file | nawk -F'~' 'BEGIN { OFS="~~"} { print $1,$2,$3 > "'$file_name'"}'

Let me know if there is further best way to code this.

Try...

Code:

nawk 'BEGIN {FS="~";OFS="~~"}{print $1, $2, $ff}' ff=$column_no input_file > $out_file_name