topic Re: scripting/awk in Operating System - HP-UX

scripting/awk

Fred Martin_1 — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:36:09 GMT

I'm searching a file (/var/mail/inbox) for a particular string, the message ID:

awk '/jA3LQqS29893/{print}' /var/mail/fred

What I really want, is to print the first "Subject:" line that follows a match for the message ID. No way to know how many lines between them.

Any suggestions? Please no perl etc. lets stick to awk.

Re: scripting/awk

James R. Ferguson — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:58:06 GMT

Hi Fred:

How about:

awk '/jA3LQqS29893/ {do {getline} while ($0!~/^Subject/);print}'

Regards!

[ perl would look nicer :)) ]

...JRF...

Re: scripting/awk

Fred Martin_1 — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:04:50 GMT

That's beautiful, even for awk, and it works great.

Just noticed though, not all messages have a Subject tag in a mail file. That means there's a possibilty that we hit the end of the file, or the next message '^From ' and we need to terminate, subject or not...

How about that one?

Re: scripting/awk

Fred Martin_1 — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:07:49 GMT

I guess the logic would be:

get a line
if end of file
or beginning of next message
then terminate, else
if Subject, print line

Re: scripting/awk

James R. Ferguson — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:14:31 GMT

Hi Fred:

OK, then amend this way, perhaps:

# awk '/jA3LQqS29893/ {do {getline} while ($0!~/^Subject/ && $0!~/^From/);if ($0~/^From/) {exit};print}'

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: scripting/awk

Sandman! — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 18:16:05 GMT

IMHO...sed might be better suited for the job-at-hand.

Re: scripting/awk

curt larson_1 — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 20:31:29 GMT

how about something like this:

awk '/jA3LQqS29893/ {flag = 1;}
/^Subject/ {if (flag == 1) {print;exit;}}
/^From/ {if (flag == 1) {exit;}'

Re: scripting/awk

Nguyen Anh Tien — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:08:08 GMT

James solution is correct.
You should take time to review awk
pls refer:
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/qref/awk.html
http://www.vectorsite.net/tsawk.html

Re: scripting/awk

Fred Martin_1 — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:30:29 GMT

Many thanks.