help needed on file handling scripts

[poolban]

Hello,<br>I have a file in UNIX as(let us say name is a.txt)and the content is like:<br><br>header<br>12345678901234567890<br>12345678901234567890<br>12345678901234567890<br>trailer<br><br>I want to have a file b.txt which will look like<br><br>12345678901234567890********************<br>12345678901234567890********************<br>12345678901234567890********************<br><br>This means I want to put some fixed number of * at the end of each line and I want to remove the header and trailer record. The header (record number 1) and trailer record (last record) can have any content and unconditionally I want them to be removed from the target file.<br><br>One small point. Let us assume I know that the original file (a.txt) has record length of 20. The final file record length also I know (assume 110). In this case, the script should calculate (110 - 90) and generate 90 (110 - 20) * (or any character for that matter - may be space) as filler. The value 110 and 20 can be stored in variables in the script program.<br><br>The number of records between 'header' and 'trailer' is unknown in real life file.<br><br>Please provide me a script which can be used as convert &lt;file-name&gt; which will take file name as a.txt and will convert that as a.txt.conv<br><br>Best regards,<br><br>Poolak

 

[bigscouse]

sed '1d;s/[^$]$/&\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*/;$d' < infile > workfile
cut -b-120 workfile > outfile
rm workfile


Deltes the 1st line, adds 120 * to each line, deletes the last line then take the first 120 chars of each line. [sig]<p>Ged Jones<br><a href=mailto:gedejones@hotmail.com>gedejones@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Top man[/sig]