awk - single character field separator

[Mark Tunnell]

How do I assign a field separator of any single character in awk? The following works fine (prints an 'h') in Linux but not in HP-UX:
echo hello | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "" } ; {print $1}

[Paul Cross_1]

hpux awk is not gnu, and therefore has different options and features.

From the gnu website:

Traditionally, the behavior of FS equal to "" was not defined. In this case, most versions of Unix awk simply treat the entire record as only having one field. (d.c.)

-P

[Mark Tunnell]

Thanks for responding. I gave the Linux example so it would be clear what I was trying to do. Do you know what the corresponding HP-UX syntax would be?

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

None.

/root# echo hello | awk 'BEGIN { FS="" } ; {print $1}'
hello

download and install gawk + libiconv from
http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Gnu/gawk-3.1.4/

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Stephen Keane]

I don't think you can in hpux.

In Linux you could also do

echo hello | awk -F "" '{print $1}'

[S.Rider]

awk -F":"

[Stephen Keane]

Or,

echo hello | awk 'BEGIN {FIELDWIDTHS=1} { print $1 }'

But sadly, this doesn't help with your problem, as the output on HP is 'hello'.

[Rick Garland]

Are other options available?

Could you use the substr() function within perl or shell?

What about sed?

[Paul Cross_1]

Mark,
I understood your request. I included the clip from the gnu site to try to explain that this is a feature of GNU only, and that UNIX awk doesn't let you do it. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

-paul

[Mark Tunnell]

Thanks for all the responses. I'll go ahead and user perl for this.

[harry d brown jr · Accepted solution]

Here you go:


echo hello | awk '{gsub("(.)","& " );print $1;}'


The POWER of regex's!!!


live free or die
harry d brown jr

[harry d brown jr]

or

echo hello | sed "s/\(.\)/& /g" | awk '{printf("f1(%s) f2(%s) f3(%s) f4(%s) f5(%s)\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5);}

f1(h) f2(e) f3(l) f4(l) f5(o)

or
echo hello | sed "s/\(.\)/& /g" | awk '{print $5,$4,$3,$2,$1;}'

o l l e h


live free or die
harry d brown jr

[Mark Tunnell]

Wow! Thanks!

[Vibhor Kumar Agarwal]

Why to complicate
We can simply use:

echo hello | sed "s/./& /g" | awk '{print $5,$4,$3,$2,$1;}'

I know we can use any general os command in awk block, but somehow i am unable to figure out how.
Can someone help me start it out.

Thanks

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

lt09:/home/merijn 110 > echo hello | perl -lne'$,=" ";print split//'
h e l l o
lt09:/home/merijn 111 > echo hello | perl -lne'$,=" ";print reverse split//'
o l l e h
lt09:/home/merijn 112 >

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn