How to append to existing lines at specific position?

[gopalm73]

Hi,

I am trying to append a particular text to each line of the file starting from 200th position. The file contains lines of varied length of below 200 characters.

So, I want to make each line 200 char long with padded blanks and then append some text startin from 201th position. Please help.

Thanks
Gopal M

 

[CaKiwi]

Here is an awk program that will do what you want.

{
while (length < 200) $0 = $0 &quot; &quot;
$0 = $0 &quot;Text at end&quot;
print
}

Alternatively you could check thread271-141285 in the awk forum for another way to pad a line.

Hope this helps
CaKiwi

 

[awk]

Hi,

The script is given below and it works fine except for the $PERIOD_NAME that does not pick the value of the variable. It instead prints the $PERIOD_NAME literally.

Is there a way to make it substitute the value instead of printing the text as such?

cat /tmp/$SYSRESP.$reqid.dat.tmp | nawk ' { while (length < 300) $0 = $0 &quot; &quot;
$0 = $0 &quot;$PERIOD_NAME&quot;
print
} ' > /tmp/$SYSRESP.$reqid.new


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Gopal M

 

[SpiritOfLennon]

Where is the value for $PERIOD_NAME coming from? Is it coming from an outside source?
I don't know about nawk but with awk you would use
cat /tmp/$SYSRESP.$reqid.dat.tmp | awk -v PERIOD_NAME=$VARIABLE ' { while (length < 300) $0 = $0 &quot; &quot;
$0 = $0 $PERIOD_NAME
print
} ' > /tmp/$SYSRESP.$reqid.new

SOL
The best thing about banging your head against a wall is when you stop.

 

[CaKiwi]

SOL is correct and will work for nawk as well as awk but I believe it should be

$0 =$0 PERIOD_NAME

not

$0 =$0 $PERIOD_NAME

Also it is a little simpler to write

nawk '{...}' /tmp/$SYSRESP.$reqid.dat.tmp > /tmp/$SYSRESP.$reqid.new

rather than using cat.

Hope this helps.

CaKiwi