how to find blank characters in a column

[scottpeter]

I have a large data file which has fixed width data. How can I find out if there are any blank values in one of the columns. Or whether there are any blank characters in the value in the column.
Say for example the column length 10, it is the 5th column in the file and its position is 101-110.
Thanks,
Scott.

 

[PHV]

awk is your friend:

awk 'substr($0,101,10)~/ /{
  printf "NR=%d,Col5=/%s/\n",NR,substr($0,101,10)
}' /Path/To/YourInputFile

Hope This Help
PH.

 

[CrackerZ]

Or using cut you could:


#Initialise a line counter to inform you of blank records
linecount=0
for field in `cut -c101-110`
do
$linecount=`expr linecount + 1`
if [ "x$field" == "x" ]; then
#This field is blank
echo "Record Number: $linecount, column 5 is blank"
fi
done

Forgive

 

[scottpeter]

How can I do the same, that is find the rows that have blank values in a particular column in a special character delimited file.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[vgersh99]

finding an lines in scott.txt (comma separated) where the third field is 'empty':

1,2,,4, 5, ,
1,2,3,4,5,6
1,2, ,4, 5,,

nawk -F, -v col=3 '$col ~ /^[ ]*$/' scott.txt

vlad
+----------------------------+
| #include<disclaimer.h> |
+----------------------------+

 

[scottpeter]

I am still not clear how to use it.
Suppose my data file has values like this with 'Ç' as delimiter, how will I check the values between these special characters.

Ç000002ÇCÇ702Ç869Ç
Ç000002ÇCÇ541Ç826Ç
Ç000002ÇCÇÇ994Ç
Ç000002ÇCÇ Ç532Ç
Ç000002ÇCÇ702Ç294Ç


Thanks,
Scott

 

[vgersh99]

for the THIRD empty field given your field separator:

nawk -F 'Ç' -v col=3 '$col ~ /^[ ]*$/' scott.txt

vlad
+----------------------------+
| #include<disclaimer.h> |
+----------------------------+