formatting a file headache


 
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# 1  
Old 02-16-2007
formatting a file headache

Hello does anyone know how to do the following using some simple unix if possible:

I have a file with the following info as comma separated. It shows username, id number and all the subjects they are enrolled in on the one line. The subjects are separated by colons.


UserName,ID,Subject
jsmith,235456939,MATH29879:PHYS45979
jdoe,750378929,ENGL36899:JAPN92576


I need it to have just one course per user line per user. So that it would look like:

jsmith,235456939,MATH29879
jsmith,235456939,PHYS45979
jdoe,750378929,ENGL36899
jdoe,750378929,JAPN92576

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm pulling my hair out!
Thnx
-J
# 2  
Old 02-16-2007
Quote:
Originally Posted by ynneycat
Does anyone have any ideas? I'm pulling my hair out!
Thnx
-J
Why do you have to? Smilie

Code:
sed 's/\(.*\),\(.*\),\(.*\):\(.*\)/\1,\2,\3\
\1,\2,\4/' filename

The enter mark after "\3\" is mandatory
# 3  
Old 02-16-2007
Wow! This rocks.
That seems to work. Unbelievable.

The actual file may have anywhere from 1 to 10 or more colon separated subjects per user. Do you think it will still work Ok?

I guess I'm wondering if the \1,\2,\3 are looking for a specific number of entries in the last field.

As you can see I'm a newbie and have only used sed for the most basic of find and replaces.

Cheers,
-J
# 4  
Old 02-16-2007
Not a problem!

Could you please post some examples, where you think it wont work ? Smilie

That would be helpful to find !
# 5  
Old 02-16-2007
Thanks - Yes, probably should have been really specific
The file I'm working with will have hundreds of lines. The first few lines basically like this (incl headers)


The end of each line always has 6 commas, but before the 6 commas are the subjects each user is enrolled in. There may actually be twenty or more subjects.

It looks like the initial sed you suggested only works if there are two subjects per line. In my real file, the exact number of subjects per line is unpredictable.


User Name,Password,ID,First Name,Last Name,Subject,Other,#User Type,City,#Email,#Some Field,#Another Field
jsmi3279,xxxxxx,123456789,John,Smith,XMLT1005:MATH2987:PHYS4597:FRNC3578:ITLN590:LATN3490,,,,,,
glik2398,xxxxxx,123456789,Gill,Likely,XMLT1001:XMLT1004:MATH2987:PHYS4597,,,,,,
lbro4982,xxxxxx,123456789,Lucinda,Brown,XMLT1001:XMLT1002:ENGL3689:JAPN9257,,,,,,
# 6  
Old 02-16-2007
Code:
awk -F"," ' { 
str=$1
for( i = 2 ; i <= NF - 7 ; ++i )
	str=str "," $i
n=split($(NF-6),arr,":")
for( i = 1 ; i <= n ; ++i )
	print str "," arr[n]
} ' file

# 7  
Old 02-16-2007
Untested, but conceptually very similar to the previous post:

Code:
awk -F '[,:]' '{ for ( i=7, i <= NF i++) { printf "%s,%s,%s\n", $1, $2, $i } }

On Solaris you will need to use nawk instead of awk.
 
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