awk error "has too many fields"

[Dorga]

I am having a problem solving this, the data fields in the file can be quite long and some are too long for awk to deal with. Looking for ideas.. I do not need to use awk, I just didnt know any other solution. All records in the data file are comma delimited.

awk -F"," '{print $15}' < blah

awk: record `3147879,0,3,0,SMS_he...' has too many fields
record number 103
Broken Pipe

 

[PHV]

Take a look at the cut command.
Lot of awk flavors are limited to 100 fields.

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[futurelet]

One way to do it is to write a function that splits [tt]$0[/tt] into an array and returns the nth field:

BEGIN { FS="^.*$" ; xFS="," }
{ print f(15) }

function f( n,    a )
{ split( $0, a, xFS )
  return a[n]
}