Find and replace a decimal point in file at certain position

[njdnjd]

Hello fellow scripters: I am a beginner Unix scripter and would like to know if there are Unix commands available that would find and replace a deminal point in a .txt file AT A CERTAIN POSITION in the file. I have records of 250 character length and want to only target if the decimal point in at position 204 or greater. Are there commands that will accomplish this?

Thank you in advance for your time.

 

[PHV]

man awk

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ181-2886

 

[futurelet]

awk '{a=substr($0,1,203); b=substr($0,204);
sub(/\./, "?", b); print a b}' oldfile >newfile

 

[njdnjd]

Hello PHV, thank you for the sample script, I made one little change to it so it would capture all the "." after position 204 and that was to change sub to gsub.

I can't thank you enought for the help!

May you win the lottery, as I feel I have.

 

[njdnjd]

My apologies....futurelet, thank you for the script and see previous note.