UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a bunch of files in various folders. I want to go through each of them and display certain lines in a particular format

All files have a similar format

Code:

Date:
Time: 
User:
Message:
Miscellaneous:
(and some other stuff)

I want to display to only the "Date:", "Time:" "User:" lines in the format

Code:

Date: <space/tab> Time: <space/tab> User:

For example, if I have two files

Code:

Date: 12/12/12
Time: 00:15
User: usr1
Message: N/A
Miscellaneous: N/A

Code:

Date: 02/12/12
 Time: 01:15
 User: usr2
 Message: N/A
 Miscellaneous: N/A

I want a file with the following

Code:

12/12/12     00:15   usr1
02/12/12     01:15   usr2

(or)

Code:

Date: 12/12/12    Time: 00:15      User: usr1
Date: 02/12/12    Time:  01:15      User: usr2

Note, these files are in various different folder. I tried to use grep -r, but it only displays one line.

Thanks!!!

Code:

find . -type f |xargs -i awk -F : '/Date/{d=$2}/Time/{t=$2 FS $3}/User/{u=$2}END{printf "Date:  %s\tTime: %s\tUser: %s\n", d,t,u}'  {}

Another way might be ...

Given files f1 and f2 and awk script ex.awk
cat f1
Date: 12/12/12
Time: 00:15
Age: xxxxxx
Processid: 45
User: usr1
Message: N/A
Miscellaneous: N/A
hunke3@hunkemoller3:~/code/shell$ cat f2
Other: stuff
Time: 01:15
Message: N/A
Date: 02/12/12
Miscellaneous: N/A
Host: somehost
User: usr2
hunke3@hunkemoller3:~/code/shell$
hunke3@hunkemoller3:~/code/shell$
hunke3@hunkemoller3:~/code/shell$ cat ex.awk
BEGIN{
d=""; t=""; u=""; flds=0;
}
#only take lines beginning with Date | Time | User
/^Date/{d=$0;flds=flds+1;}
/^Time/{t=$0;flds=flds+1;}
/^User/{u=$0;flds=flds+1;}
{
if(flds==3){#ok,so we have a complete set of fields
printf("%s %s %s\n",d,t,u);
d=""; t=""; u=""; flds=0
}
}

# run it ....
awk -f awkEx.awk f1 f2
Date: 12/12/12 Time: 00:15 User: usr1
Date: 02/12/12 Time: 01:15 User: usr2

Thanks for the replies, but I got a couple of issues with the codes

@rdcwayx
I tried the code that you had given, but it was only printing blanks i.e. the variable d,t,u were empty.

@munkeHoller

I tested your code against a few files, and it works. But how to I pass in all the files, given using the find command, into your script?

Thanks a lot!!!!

Code:

#
# given my previous snippet .... and files f1 f2 where f1 is in ~/thisdir and f2 is in ~/thatdir
# one way ... 
#
find ~/thisdir ~/thatdir -name 'f?' -exec awk -f awkEx.awk {} \;

It works

Sorry to ask again...how does the code get modified if I want to print specific lines of each file eg. line x, line y and line z. Its seems my data occasionally has some of the terms (e.g. user) twice in the file. I know it has something to do with NR, but i don't know where to place the conditional.

show us the data pls.