data extraction from file - help

[Praveen Hari]

I have file format as given below...
First I need to find the line contating XRef. Then Extract the number 99 from that line into a variable. I will use that variable to create a New file. Following lines are there in the original file.

#! rnews 0
Newsgroups: xxx
From: xxx
Subject: xxx
Date: xxx
Path: linux-nntp!forums-master!forums-1-dub!forums-1-dub!forums-master.sybase.com!forums-1-dub.sybase.com
Xref: linux-nntp sybase.test.xml:99
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[V.Tamilvanan]

x=`awk -F : '/Xref/{print $3}' `

[John Carr_2]

cat filename | awk -F : '/Xref/{print $3}' > newfilename

John.

[Mark Grant]

grep Xref | awk -F: '{ print $3 }'

[Mark Grant]

Sorry, didn't notice we'd all done the same thing!

how about I do it with perl then

perl -n -e 'if(/Xref.+:(\d+)/){print "$1\n"}'

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Mark, one-liner code uses command line options :)

# perl -nle'/^Xref.+:\s*(\d+)/&&print$1' file

in a real script, it could be as

--8<---
#!/opt/perl/bin/perl

while (<>) {
m/^Xref\s*:.*:\s*(\d+)/ or next;
print "$1\n";
}
-->8---

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

Part of the problem in your other post... It depends on whether it is always the third or last column, you can use awk or cut...

If it is always the 3rd column:
grep -i '^xref:' | cut -d: -f3

If it is always the last column:
awk -F: '/XRef/ {print $NF}'

Mind one thing: awk will not match any line now, because XRef != Xref, that's why I used the liberty to use the -i option to grep.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Elmar, please mail me at h dot m dot brand at procura dot nl

no points please :)

[Praveen Hari]

When I run
awk -F: '/XRef/ {print $NF}' filename > filename1
It writes correct output into filename2.
But if I put the same command on a script file named 1.csh and run it, it doesn't out the results into filename2.

Can some one help me why it doesn't work ???

[john korterman]

Hi,
make a small correction, change:
XRef
to
Xref


regards,
John K.