UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello, I'm quite a noobie in programming in UNIX
and I was wondering if it is possible to use 'grep' or similar method
to find PATTERNS from designated location (of charactor)
for example

|param 1 ||param2 |
andrew kim josh
daniel kim michelle
michelle andrew kim

I hope to be able to search up
kim and display only the first 2 lines not the 3rd

i know that cut has -c1-10 so you can specify charactor to cut
but can the grep or other things be done the same? and display the whole line?

thank you very much
regards

So to clarify, you are wanting to only match lines that have (for example) 'kim' in the first or second field, but display the entire line where it's matched, right?

If so, you'll need a little bit of logic around the grep:

Code:

while read line ; do if echo $line | cut -d ' ' -f 1,2 | grep kim > /dev/null ; then echo $line ; fi ; done

Hello Smiling Dragon
Thanks for the post

sorry but what is /dev/null?

and REALLY sorry but i have a small problem
when i do read by line
my ' '(space x 10) is same as ' ' (space x1)
is there a way to keep the spaces as it is while
reading line by line?
thanks (this is important because i cannot use delim as some are like JenniferKim 2 params are stuck together)

I think I follow what you mean...
If you need something to appear in the forums as you've typed it, surround it with CODE tags (the "#" symbol in the editor).

/dev/null is just a garbage can, it means that I want the output from grep to go nowhere as we don't need it. You can get a similar effect by using grep with the -q option but that only wroks on certain versions of grep.

If your fields are exactly 8 chars wide, we can change the cut call in the code like so:

Code:

cut -d ' ' -f 1,2

Becomes

Code:

cut -c 1-16

(ie, instead of cutting fields 1 and 2 seperated by spaces, we cut chars 1-8 and 9-16)

oh, thank you
well my code is exactly certain character wide but
when i use read line by line method
it seems to shrink it down
so if i type

cat emplist
Andrew Kim..........Daniel Kim
Henry Kim..........Danny Kim
Daniel Taegyun tk KimAndrew Kim

but read line then echo'ing it gives me
Andrew Kim.Daniel Kim
Henry Kim.Danny Kim
Daniel Taegyun tk KimAndrew Kim

is there -(something) statement that preserves the # #?
sorry my question is starting to go really long..
and I've replaced (space) with . thanks

ps. i'v tried # #? and # # is same as # #?

regards

If we're talking about formatting problems, you must use CODE tags or we'll never understand what you are after.
However, If you want echo to not contract spaces, add quotes around the params passed to it:

Code:

then echo $line

Becomes

Code:

then echo "$line"

thank you for your fast reply
I think i've got it working