UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Im looking for a way to setup a lil' script that will read the output from a command and dump certain items from that into another file

for an example, im trying this
cat test | grep "statement" > test.answer

but its giving me the full line that it finds
is there any way to take out a portion of text from before what i want and after what i want?

as in, I am searching for address=here
so i: cat test | grep "here" > test.answer
and i want to get rid of the parts before and after the word 'here'...is there anyway to do this?

Thanks
David

First to choices that come to mind:

awk and PERL


I prefer PERL more than the grep/awk combo. The beauty of these utlities is that there are many, many ways to accomplish these routine tasks.

Try this for example

cat FILE_NAME | awk '{print $1}' > ouput_file

This will take out the first field in FILE_NAME and put it in the output_file

Best bet is to look up awk, there are some good examples in the man page.

thanks, now i need to know how to get it to parse..
i had already tried the man pages for awk (but they didnt really help me figure much of anything out)
and i tried using it with awk like:

cat file | awk '(print $1)' > testfile

and its giving me parse errors
so i tried to pipe it from grep and get the same thing

awk: cmd. line:1: (print $1)
awk: cmd. line:1: ^ parse error
awk: cmd. line:2: (print $1)
awk: cmd. line:2: ^ unexpected newline

so i move the > testfile to right afer ther $1)' (took out the whitespace) and got the same thing. Im not all that good with scripting or debugging so if I could get some help on this one too please. btw, I'm also using slackware on 2.2.19 if that helps any.

Thanks

You are experience syntax problems with AWK. It takes a while to get used to it Find some simple examples in the texts and you will be running smooth in no time.

okay, scratch that last one
i was using ()'s instead of {}'s
no errors now=)

Thanks again

I think your using the wrong brackets..

You sould be using the ones { } and not ( )