Need to add a space in file

[rekim]

Problem: The fields in my flat file are not tab separated. I would like to add tabs (or a space) in between the fields so that it can be processed later.

Here's the catch: The file is large so I do not want to create any intermediary files. So I assume no cutting-pasting – anyway as efficiently as possible.

Bonus points if you can get (read?) each field into a variable for use in a shell script. mrraia@cvs.com


Before:
D02101BOSTON
D05047HARTFORD
D05601WASHINGTON
D22168NEWTON
D02351WATERTOWN

After:
D 02101 BOSTON
D 05047 HARTFORD
D 05601 WASHINGTON
D 22168 NEWTON
D 02351 WATERTOWN

 

[Salem]

Well you can read each line into a shell script, and do some fixed-width field splitting.

#!/bin/bash

cat c1.txt | ( while read -n 1 code ; do
  read -n 5 area
  read town
  echo "+"${code}"+"${area}"+"${town}"+"
done )

> The file is large so I do not want to create any intermediary files.
I take it you don't want this, if the above works.

 

[vgersh99]

I think the fastest is the one below with no intermidiary files.

# this is for the 'update'
ex - myFile.txt <<EOF
%s/^\(.\)\(.....\)\(.*\)/\1 \2 \3/g
wq!
EOF

# this is for 'reading':
#!/bin/ksh

sed -e 's/^\(.\)\(.....\)\(.*\)/\1 \2 \3/g' cities.txt | while read code zipcode city
do
echo &quot;code->[${code}] zipcode->[${zipcode}] city->[${city}]&quot;
done;




vlad
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