UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi guys, I'm very new to unix but am liking it a lot so far, so please be gentle on this newb. I tried using the search for this question, but no luck.

Anyways, i've got a few data fields... for example

John Adress1 Adress2
Sam Adress3 Adress4
Jason Adress5 Adress6

Is there any way I can use the grep command do filter out the search, and just limit it to a few columns? Say I just want to find a name, can I limit the grep by somehow by saying grep -c1-5 filename so that I don't get any possible similar results in the addresses?

My ultimate goal in this program i'm making is just to grep Jas filename, and have
Jason Adress5 Adress6
pop up

Thanks a lot guys

If you want the line "Jason Adress5 Adress6" to come back just use standard grep.
This will give you what you want.

Code:

# grep Jason filename

But if you only want Adress5 to come back you will need to use awk or sort with a key to only return the second colomn

Sorry, I think you misunderstood my question. In my problem the street names also have similar characters to the names. So adress3 may equal John Street. So a grep for John would give

John Adress1 Adress2
Sam Adress3 Adress4

Is there any way to restrict the grep to searching the first 4-5 characters of each line, as opposed to searching the entire document?

Hi,
How about greping just the field you're interested in ? i mean

Code:

awk '{print $1} filename | grep -i John

PS: I love your nick!

Using grep:

Code:

gep '^John' file.name

(g|n|m)awk

Code:

awk '$1 ~ /^John/' file.name