This is my file.
NAME|NUM|ADDR|AGE
abcd|02|abc|cd|12
jake|04|xy|zzb|12
lau|92||xcx| 56
My desired output has to be like this
NAME|NUM|ADDR|AGE
abcd|02|abc#cd|12
jake|04|xy#zzb|18
lau|92|#xcx| 56
My file had 4 fields and the 3rd col has a pipe delimiter in between the characters like "ice|cream", my requirement is to replace the | field in the 3rd with any value like (#,* or anything). Since this is pipe delimited file i'm unable to replace that particular part of the file exclusively.Any help will be very useful for me..thanks
awk solution:
awk -F'|' 'NR==1;NR>1 && NF>4{ print $1,$2,$3"#"$4,$5 }' OFS='|' file
NR==1;
- print the 1st record as is
NR>1 && NF>4
- check if record has excessive fields
$3"#"$4
- implode the 3rd and 4th fields replacing separator with a new char #
The output:
NAME|NUM|ADDR|AGE
abcd|02|abc#cd|12
jake|04|xy#zzb|12
lau|92|#xcx| 56
Just set n
to the number of whichever field you want to combine with the field after it:
$ cat tst.awk
BEGIN { FS=OFS="|" }
NR==1 { print; next }
{
for (i=1;i<=NF;i++) {
sep = (i==n ? "#" : OFS)
printf "%s%s", $i, (i<NF ? sep : ORS)
}
}
$ awk -v n=3 -f tst.awk file
NAME|NUM|ADDR|AGE
abcd|02|abc#cd|12
jake|04|xy#zzb|12
lau|92|#xcx| 56
$ awk -v n=2 -f tst.awk file
NAME|NUM|ADDR|AGE
abcd|02#abc|cd|12
jake|04#xy|zzb|12
lau|92#|xcx| 56
Or if you want a more traditional logic based solution, (and admittedly painfully long-handed ;-/) here is another solution
awk -F\| 'BEGIN{OFS="|"}
{
#dbg print "#dbg:NF="NF;
# if this record has an extra character
if (NF>4){
# loop over all fields
for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){
# if not the field of interest or last field on line, just print it
if(i!=3 && i!=NF){
printf("%s|",$i)
}
# else this is the problem field, add the # char
else if (i==3){
printf $3"#"
}
# else if last field on line, add LF char at end
else if (i==NF){
printf ("%s\n",$i)
}
}
}
# record has correct number of FS chars
else {
print $0
}
}' dat.txt
output
NAME|NUM|ADDR|AGE
abcd|02|abc#cd|12
jake|04|xy#zzb|12
lau|92|#xcx| 56
I've added comments to code to explain what is going on.
Here it is as a the all-important one-liner ;->
awk -F\| '{if (NF>4){for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){if(i!=3 && i!=NF){printf("%s|",$i)}else if(i==3){printf $3"#"}else if(i==NF){printf ("%s\n",$i)}}}else{print $0}}' dat.txt
IHTH