remove '-' from the string

[cognos11]

i have a file from which i need to select those records that match like this.

'3456-8796-0987-2345'

To do is i used simple grep command like this
grep "[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]" > file.txt

Now once i get these records i want to remove the
'-' string from the 19 char field above and the result should like

'3456879609872345'

 

[PHV]

The sed way:
sed -n '/[0-9]\{4\}-[0-9]\{4\}-[0-9]\{4\}-[0-9]\{4\}/s/-//gp' /path/to/input >output



Hope This Help, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884

 

[futurelet]

Without using grep:
[tt]
BEGIN{d4="[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]";
pat=d4 "-" d4 "-" d4 "-" d4 }
$0 ~ pat {gsub(/-/,""); print}
[/tt]