How to drop n chars from a record...

[bondtrails]

Hi all,
what's the best way to drop n characters from each record in a given file? The n characters are consecutive, but they could be at the beginning, middle, or end of the record.

For example, given file A.txt which has a record length of 1000, how can I get make file B.txt which has a record length of 800 and the first, middle, or last 200 characters of file A.txt dropped?

Thanks for the help everyone!!

--Bondster!!

 

[vgersh99]

To drop 4 chars from the beginning/end of every record - a "record" is a LINE.
You can extrapolate the rest from this example.


nawk -f drop.awk drop.txt

#------------------- drop.awk
BEGIN {
num2drop=4
}

{
# beginning
#$0=substr($0, 1, num2drop);
#end
$0=substr($0, length($0)-num2drop);
print
}

#------------------ drop.txt
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18
vlad
+----------------------------+
| #include<disclaimer.h> |
+----------------------------+

 

[tdatgod]

Hi,
why not simply use cut -c

cut -c 1-x,y-1000 file >! file2

where x and y are the columns around what you want drop.

if you want to drop multiple ranges you can simple add other column numbers

cut -c 1-5,10-20,30-40,... file >! file2

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