UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,




I am a newbie to awk. Here is my problem. Looking for an awk 1-liner to solve it:

My Computing Environment:

- Solaris10
- I prefer to use csh or sh shells



1. Lets say my input file is File1.dat (delimter = | ) and looks as follows:

(File1.dat)

Code:

2|Harry|California|blue|
3|John|Nevada|green|
4|Mary|Arizona|orange|
8|Jack|Utah|yellow|

2. I want to create a 2nd file (an output file) named File2.dat, where i replace the value in the 1stField of every line with the value of '5', so that the File2.dat looks as follows:

(File2.dat)

Code:

5|Harry|California|blue|
5|John|Nevada|green|
5|Mary|Arizona|orange|
5|Jack|Utah|yellow|

Thanks in advance,

Notice the last delimiter | at the end of each record.

If you could please let me know what part of the awk-1liner syntax refers to the FieldNumber (in this case Field1) where we are doing this value-replace operation

Andy B

Code:

/usr/xpg4/bin/awk -F\| '{$1=5}1' OFS=\| File1.dat > File2.dat