Combining records

[richardii]

Has anyone written a script to (for example) combine these 5 records:

x1,1,2,3
x1,,,,4,5
x2,1,3,5,7
x2,,,,,9,11
x3,1,2,3,4,5

into these 3:

x1,1,2,3,4,5
x2,1,3,5,7,9,11
x3,1,2,3,4,5

If you have records like this:

x1,2,4
x1,3,5

to combine you'd use the largest value. It's pretty esay in SQL, but I can't do it with GAWK.

 

[flogrr]

This works for the example input you provided.



cat yourfile | awk 'BEGIN{ FS = "," }

$1 != prev {
if (NR > 1)
printf("\n&quot
prev = $1
printf("%s", prev)
for ( i = 2; i <= NF; i++ )
if ( $i != &quot;&quot
printf(&quot;,%s&quot;, $i)
next
}

$1 == prev {
for ( i = 2; i <= NF; i++ )
if ( $i != &quot;&quot
printf(&quot;,%s&quot;, $i)
}
END { if ( NR > 1 ) printf(&quot;\n&quot }' > newfile


Hope this helps!



flogrr
flogr@yahoo.com