UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi everyone, I hope that someone can help me out:

In the following line:

PRIHDR;2809999444;2007 6.1;20070423;9;;4021473000003;;4021473000003;8714231530688;EUR;;

The output should be:

PRIHDR;2809999444;2007 6.1;20070423;4;;4021473000003;;4021473000003;8714231530688;EUR;;

I've tried some variations on the following command:

sed 's/;9;;/;4;;' <oldfile>newfile

When I run this command it tells met what to do with the ";" how can I solve this issue?

Thanks in advance,

IHulky

p.s. the other lines in the document (line 2 and further) have to be copied as well to the new file.

you can use awk? say you only have that line in a file

Code:

# awk -F ";" 'OFS=";"{$5=4;print}' file
PRIHDR;2809999444;2007 6.1;20070423;4;;4021473000003;;4021473000003;8714231530688;EUR;;

That worked perfectly thanks, can you tell me how to keep the command on the first line. In the lines below some characters have been altered to 4.

If it is any helpfull only the first line starts with PRIHDR

Thanks

Code:

awk -F ";" 'BEGIN {OFS = ";"} /^PRIHDR/{$5=4;print}  ' file

Have to test it further, when I run the command it prints the correct output on screen, although the file itself isn't altered.

Thanks for the info, have to test it further tomorrow as it is 02:30 in the morning here in the Netherlands and work starts at 08:00..

If you have any idea's I love to hear them.

Thanks again

awk does not alter files, unless you ask it to. you can just redirect the output to another file using the redirect sign ( "awk command" > anotherfile)

Add slash

Code:

sed '/^PRIHDR/s/;9;;/;4;;/' <oldfile >newfile
mv newfile oldfile

Code:

perl -i -ne ' s/;9;;/;4;;/ if ( /^PRIHDR/ ); print ' file