UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Again I am not sure the way you are running the command.
Make sure that you are not missing the single quotes ( ' ).
Can you send the command you are trying to run and the kind of
file on which you are running the command.

thanks
Apoorva

Yes very correct. As my solution assumes space as default field separator.

thanks
Apoorva

hi

the command wht i type is

cat file1 | awk`{print NF}'

and in file1 there is no feild separator

so what it means

well it seems that you are missing one space between awk and opening single quote ('). It should be like cat file1 | awk '{ print NF }'.

thanks
Apoorva

Also the first quoting character displays as a backtick in your last message. Those should be regular single quotes (ASCII 39) on both sides.

Incidentally, this is a Useless Use of Cat. Awk is perfectly capable of reading the file itself.

Code:

awk '{ print NF }' file

Try copy/paste that if you're not sure how to type the correct quotes.

hiiiii
thanks a lot tht quotes was in error i guess

thanks
regards
pari

Hi,

The above mentioned solutions provide the no.of columns for each row. But, wht if I want the no.of columns for the complete file instead of each row.
For E.g.. lets say I have a file with the below data

1 John Chicago
2 Pearl Washington

This expression awk -F' ' '{print NF}' would result in
3
3
But I need it for the complete file irrespective of no.of rows as just 3.

Please let me know the solution for this.

TIA