how to reformat flat file using cut command

[Gopi Kishore m]

Hi

today I got some new requirement ,I am not able to get the solution for this using
awk or cut command please help me.

Problem: I have given sample input file below,

I/p file
-------------------------------------------
9029774138: "B2", 1;20101009;50791.00|2;20101009;698.77|3;20290309;862655.00|4;20290309;454646.00|
5;20290309;94.00|10;20101005;0.00|11;20101103;0.00|15;20291112;47.00|16;20291203;55.00|
17;20101017;0.00
Required output file
---------------------------
9029774138:"B2":10:1,2,3,4,5,10,11,15,16,17
--------------------------------------------
out put is a colon seperated file first two fields are same as first two fields in input file, third record is the count (number of pipe symbols + 1) fourth record is string seperated by comma which contains each field after the pipe symbol .

Thanks in Anticipation
Gopi

[Bob E Campbell]

The pipe character is a rather evil separator in shell. Lots of ways to do anything on unix. Call this one the shell IFS example:

# convertStuff() {
-> IFS="#"
->
-> for X in "${@}"
-> do
-> echo $X
-> done
-> }
# convertStuff $( cat file | sed -e "s/\|/#/g" )
1;20101009;50791.00
2;20101009;698.77
3;20290309;862655.00
4;20290309;454646.00
5;20290309;94.00
10;20101005;0.00
11;20101103;0.00
15;20291112;47.00
16;20291203;55.00
17;20101017;0.00

Using that trick a pure sh solution is an easy exercise for the reader...

Bets on time until a Perl solution is posted and who does it? :-)

[Hein van den Heuvel · Accepted solution]

to 'walk' the list you'll have to write a little program in the language of your choice.
C, shell, perl, awk.

Using AWK, the following seems to work:

---------- test.awk --------
{
values = split ($3, a, "|");
line = $1 $2 values ":";
for (i = 1; i < values; i++) {
split (a[i], b, ";");
line = line b[1] ",";
}
split (a[values], last_one, ";");
print line last_one[1];
}
----------------

use as : # awk -f test.awk test.txt

The program splits $3 into an array 'a'

It starts by building the first part of the line using $1, $2 and the returned count for the split.

Then it walks all but the last element from 'a' to split again on ";" into array 'b'.
Element 1 in 'b' has the value.
Glue that to the line, and add a comma.

Add the last one separately to avoid the extra comma.

Enjoy,
Hein

[Gopi Kishore m]

ThanQ Hein,

It is very useful. Once again Thanks for your solution.



Cheers,
Gopi