UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I would appreciate it if any one can guide me in using awk perhaps sed in extracting some values from a long string.

here is an example.
.......some lines here........
........ aaaa bbbb cccc ddddd eeeee fffff gggg (time:hhhh)........
......some lines here also..........

How can I extract bbbb, eeee, hhhh from multiple lines in a single transaction? the position of these values varies

odogbolu98

The following awk program locates lines that have a field that starts with (time:. Fields are separated with whitespace. Once located, it assumes that bbbb is 6 fields prior and eeee is 3 fields prior. If there are not 6 fields or 3 fields prior, it will assign "NULL". I don't know what output you want. Currently, it prints b=bbbb e=eeeee h=hhhh. All qualifying lines are processed. If you want only one, we can make it exit after processing the first line.

Code:

#!/bin/sh
awk '/\(time:/ {
for (hloc=1;hloc<=NF;hloc++)
    if (substr($hloc,1,6)=="(time:")
      {h=substr($hloc,7,index($hloc,")")-7)
       if (hloc<=6)
          b="NULL"
       else
          b=$(hloc-6)
       if (hloc<=3)
          e="NULL"
       else
          e=$(hloc-3)
       print "b=" b "  e=" e "  h=" h}
}' odog.txt
exit 0

Thanks Jimbo for your contribution, that was helpful in pointing me in the right direction.


Keep up the good work.

Odogbolu98