Awk question - Suppose I have a file called Test1 with the ....

[New2awk]

.....following data:
field1^Vfield2^V^field3^Vfield4

I need to take the data from test1 and output it into test2 but where i can specify the order that the fields come out.
I have tried to cut the fields using the following command
grep "f" test1 | cut f 4,3,2,1 -d"^V" >> test2. However this merely outputs the fields in test2 in their original order.

Is there an awk routine that I can run to do this (bearing in mind that I do not know any awk!)?

Thankyou very much in advance.

 

[dchoulette]

You are right, cut always display the fields in the original order.

for awk:

awk -F"^V" '/f/{print $4,$3,$2,$1;}' test1 > test2

The /f/ part replace your grep. The {print ...} part replace your cut.

If you want to have the same separator (^V) in the output:

awk 'BEGIN {IFS=OFS="^V"}; /f/{print $4,$3,$2,$1;}' test1 > test2

This set the InputFieldSeparator and the OutputFieldSeparator before any line is read.