UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi there, folks!

back again for a little help from my friends...

My job right now is to get all the words between[*] , in a sentence, deleted and written to a new file, and the code I use is this:

Code:

awk -F"[][]" '{print $2 > "words"}{$2="[ ]"}1' inputfile > outputfile

But now I find that is does it ok for a sentence containing ONLY one pair of brackets and NOT two or more pairs of brackets.

Example sentence:

Code:

The children play [outside] in the summer, but in the winter they play [inside].

I need to get: The children play [ ] in the summer, but in the winter they play [ ].
and the words blanked out have them sent to a new file.

Could you help me?

Thxx in advance.

Try...

Code:

 
awk -F"[][]" '{for(i=0;++i<=NF;){
  if(i%2==0){
    printf "[";print $i >> "words";printf "]"}
  else{printf $i}
}{printf "\n"}
 }' infile

Thank you so much malcomx999: mission accomplished. Excellent piece of code!!
Could a further improvement be added?
When a line contains 2 groups of words to blank out, they are appended in different lines to the 'words' file; could they appear on the same line? ;.)

Ofcourse...

Code:

awk -F"[][]" '{for(i=0;++i<=NF;){
  if(i%2==0){
    printf "[";printf (i==(NF-1))?$i "\n":$i "\t" >> "words";printf "]"}
  else{printf $i}
}{printf "\n"}
}' infile

Thanks again mate. You really 'made my day'.
Great!