Display/print only fields that contain string?

[fixengineer]

Everything I read seems to deal with fixed amount of fields, but what if the amount of fields change? How can I search for a string in ALL fields(not a specific one like $1 $3) and display only that field?

If awk can't do it I'm thinking that maybe I can transfer the fields to positionals and then do a for loop that "ins" the positionals and checks if it matches a string, then stops once it finds the string and declares that the target field. There has to be an easier way though.

Thanks.

 

[PHV]

A starting point:
for(i=1;i<=NF;++i)if($i=="string")print $i

Hope This Helps, PH.
FAQ219-2884
FAQ181-2886

 

[fixengineer]

What is the context for your answer? Is this a for loop with an if then statement in it? AWK? Is there a way to do this with just awk and grep?

 

[PHV]

As you asked in the awk forum I posted an awk snippet.

 

[fixengineer]

By the way, another aproach on this would be using awk or sed to find a string and wildcard and then ONLY display what it finds or delete the rest of the line. Basically a grep -o alternative.

For message:

Frank^ATimmy^A4504

find ^ATim*^A(begin with "Tim" and end with "^A".

And display what you found/matched only:

Timmy^A

 

[fixengineer]

I was'nt sure if that was awk since it does not apear to follow the AWK syntax and I tried it and get this:

% cat -v fix.log | grep ABT1969 | awk for(i=1;i<=NF;++i)if($i=="string")print $i
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `for(i'

Where an how should I be using this?

 

[PHV]

awk '/ABT1969/{for(i=1;i<=NF;++i)if($i~/string/)print $i}' fix.log

You probably have to define the field separator.
You really search a field containing the literal [!]string[/!]
BTW, man awk is your friend.

Hope This Helps, PH.
FAQ219-2884
FAQ181-2886

 

[fixengineer]

You are the man PHV!! That works like a charm! I just set the field seperator and bam! This is great! Being able to do this opens up MANY possibilities for me. Thank you VERY much!