Substitute in column 4 2

[johnherman]

I want to change every occurence of I (Insert) to U (Update) in column 4 of every row in a Newline record delimited file (ordinary unix file). Can anyone help with sed or awk?

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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[PHV]

Something like this ?
awk '$4=="I"{$4="U"}1' /path/to/input > output

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ181-2886

 

[johnherman]

Thanks, but this is not quite working. When I get it working in my Solaris environment, I will post the working solution here.

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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[PHV]

In solaris use nawk.

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ181-2886

 

[johnherman]

nawk `$4=="I" {$4="U"} 1` infile > outfile

is not changing anything in outfile, although all rows are copied.

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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[PHV]

I wonder about the backquote, ie ` vs '
Anyway, why not post some samples input record and elaborate on the field separator ?

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ181-2886

 

[johnherman]

Here's the error using even a different delimiter in the awk command.

nawk \$4=="I"{$4="U"} /data/etl112/load/IdsClmClm>
nawk: syntax error at source line 1
context is
>>> $4==I{= <<< U}1 /data/etl112/load/IdsClmClmPedestrianFkey.dat111
nawk: illegal statement at source line 1

Also, here's a sample of the data. It is pipe delimited, but the absolute column 4 is what I want to change (delimited column 2)

0|"I"|"N"|"Y"|"2006-03-1recordcontinuestonewline
0|"I"|"N"|"Y"|"2006-03-16 11.55.01.recordcontinues
0|"I"|"N"|"Y"|"2006-03-16 11.55

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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[PHV]

nawk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="|"}$2=="\"I\""{$2="\"U\""}1' /data/etl112/load/IdsClmClmPedestrianFkey.dat111

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ181-2886

 

[johnherman]

Yes. Most gracious of you to help reduce the time I will be spending rerunning stuff this weekend.

Still would like to know how to do a direct substitution in column 4 of $0 - maybe when I'm done with the rerun.

Thanks again PHV.

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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[futurelet]

Still would like to know how to do a direct substitution in column 4 of $0

awk '{$0=substr($0,1,3) "U" substr($0,5)}1'