UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All,

I have to count the number of occurences of the character " ; " in a given line.

I had used the following awk command to achieve the same

echo $KOP.dat|awk '{split($1,my,";"); for(i in my)c++ }END{print c-1}'

My file KOP.dat had the following data

1;"A";"DUN";"405";"022837000";"LOT2";10;10;20;10;39;45;89;87;99;5654654;879878;20080327;"1015";"F1"; " ";"G";"04"

The output given by the above command was 20 but I have 22 semi-colons in the line. The same utility worked good on some ealier occasions can some one please advice.

Thanks
KOP.

Code:

cat <<EOF | awk -F";" '{semic += (NF-1)} END {print semic}'
1;"A";"DUN";"405";"022837000";"LOT2";10;10;20;10;39;45;89;87;99;5654654;879878;20080327;"1015";"F1"; " ";"G";"04"
EOF
22