Change delimiter

[ravioli]

Hello All,

I am having trouble with what seems simple. I am trying to change the delimiters in a file using awk. The current delimiter is a tab and I would like to change it to a ":" (colon).

I am on the Korn shell and have tried the following:

awk -F: {print} filename

and also:

awk 'BEGIN { OFS=FS = ":" }
{ print }' datafile

I have also tried some other permutations of the above. I know I am close. Any ideas?

Ravioli

 

[vgersh99]

nawk -v OFS=':' '$0=$0' datafile

vlad
+----------------------------+
| #include<disclaimer.h> |
+----------------------------+

 

[vgersh99]

ooops, sorry!

nawk -v OFS=':' '$1=$1' datafile

vlad
+----------------------------+
| #include<disclaimer.h> |
+----------------------------+

 

[ravioli]

Vlad,

Thanks for your help.
What is the difference between nawk and awk?

Bradley

 

[vgersh99]

nawk stands for NewAWK.

Under Solaris (and some other OS's - HO-UX I think as well], the /usr/bin/awk is the OLD (circa '1980s') version of awk. The 'nawk' is newer and provides some additional functionality.

You might find the following links useful:

http://www.shelldorado.com/articles/awkcompat.html

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-lang/awk/faq/

vlad
+----------------------------+
| #include<disclaimer.h> |
+----------------------------+

 

[ravioli]

Vlad,

Thanks again, it worked great. I am working on a Solaris Box.

Bradley

 

[vgersh99]

on Solaris don't use /usr/bin/awk - it's an OLD-OLD-OLD awk.

use either /usr/bin/nawk OR a POSIX compliant /usr/xpg4/bin/awk

vlad
+----------------------------+
| #include<disclaimer.h> |
+----------------------------+

 

[aigles]

The AIX version of awk doesn't reevaluate $0 when it do [tt]$1=$1[/tt].
The syntax that must be used is [tt]$1=$1""[/tt]

Jean Pierre.