AWK: don't want to print a space at end of line ...

[cptk]

...but I want to keep the space between the successful words I do find and still preserve the newline.

Anotherword, I want the output from each line to appear on the same line, spearated by a space, with the last word having no space at the end of line.

My Input Data:

1dog 2dog 3bird
5dog 4bird 4dog

Desired Output:

1dog 2dog <--no space at end of line
5dog 4dog <--no space at end of line

awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF,++i)if($i ~/dog/)printf("%s ",$i);print""}'


I know there are different ways to put a space between each successful $i (i.e. - printf("%s$s", $i,OFS) ), but my problem is when the line is finished, I don't want the last space at end of each line.

how can I do this??

 

[PHV]

awk '{s="";for(i=1;i<=NF;++i)if($i ~/dog/)s=s" "$i;print substr(s,2)}' /path/to/input

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ181-2886

 

[stefanwagner]

sed 's/ [0-9a-zA-Z]*$//g' input

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[cptk]

Thanks PHV ...
that's a nice way to trim leading whitespace. I was going to go about it from the trailing-side with the length(s)-1 approach within the substr. Your way is cleaner!

 

[duncdude]

awk '{ print $1 " " $2 }' dogbird.txt


Kind Regards
Duncan