UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

this is changing format of the first column, all my dates are in the second row, i have tried taking what you provided an going through different tutorials and cant get it to mod

Here is the text:
Minor 20130503031500 CRBSC35 DIGITAL PATH QUALITY SUPERVISION
Minor 20130503040000 CRBSC35 DIGITAL PATH QUALITY SUPERVISION

Code:

echo 20130226022200 | awk '{ print substr($0,5,2) "-" substr($0,7,2) "-" substr($0,1,4) " " substr($0,9,2) ":" substr($0,11,2) ":" substr($0,13) }' GSM_alm.log

this is my output after command:

r -20-Mino 13:05:03011500 CRBSC35 DIGITAL PATH QUALITY SUPERVISION
r -20-Mino 13:05:03030000 CRBSC35 DIGITAL PATH QUALITY SUPERVISION

You are doing it wrong!

What I posted was just to give you an idea. If you want to change your second field then you have to specify $2 instead of $0

Also no need to echo and pipe output to awk if it is reading from a file:

Code:

awk '{ $2 = substr($2,5,2) "-" substr($2,7,2) "-" substr($2,1,4) " " substr($2,9,2) ":" substr($2,11,2) ":" substr($2,13) }1' GSM_alm.log

got it, i missed the first $2 in my modified commands. Thank you.