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Cutting specific columns from lines

 
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# 1  
Old 04-17-2015
Cutting specific columns from lines
I am trying to remove columns 81-97 from a line that can be as long as 114 characters. Because a number of lines might not have under 80 characters, using the cut command following by paste could be a problem. While sed might work, is there some other utility that could do this more easily?

Thanks in advance.
# 2  
Old 04-17-2015
A few systems still have utilities which can't handle lines longer than 1024 characters, but 114 characters isn't a problem for any utility I know of.

Are columns 81-97 the last columns? Removing trailing columns is trivial in awk, just set the number of fields.

Code:
awk '{ NF=80 } 1' inputfile > outputfile

# 3  
Old 04-17-2015
Thank you, but this isn't the last column. If the line length is < 80 I don't mess with it but I need to keep from col 98 to the end on longer lines. The field isn't needed and copying these data to another application causes a line wrap.
# 4  
Old 04-17-2015
A little trickier but awk can still handle it.
Code:
awk 'length($0) > 80 { # Only run this code block on lines longer than 80 chars
        # Save columns 98 - end of line
        S="" ; for(N=98; N<=NF; N++) S=S " " $N
        # Strip off all columns past 80 from line
        NF=80
        # paste columns 98 - ... onto end of line
        $0=$0 S
} 1' input > output

# 5  
Old 04-17-2015
Thanks for trying but that script produced an exact copy on the input.
# 6  
Old 04-17-2015
Quote:
Originally Posted by wbport
Thanks for trying but that script produced an exact copy on the input.
High probability that it would as we don't know what the file looks like AND what your field separator is/are....
# 7  
Old 04-17-2015
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do, but if I'm guessing correctly, try:
Code:
awk '{print substr($0, 1, 80) substr($0, 98)}' file

If you want to try this on a Solaris/SunOS system, change awk to /usr/xpg4/bin/awk.
This User Gave Thanks to Don Cragun For This Post:
wbport
 
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