tabs and spaces problem

[dessie1981]

Hi everyone,

Im quite new to awk and i am having a problem parsing a txt file.
The problem is that i have a number of different columns seperated by tabs yet some of the columns have spaces in them, awk is seeing the spaces as a seperator also

I am running awk from the command line

e.g.

myfile.txt

tab1 tab2 tab3 tab4 tab4 tab4

cat myfile.txt|awk '{print $4}'

will return only "tab4"

How do i get awk to return "tab4 tab4 tab4"

i have also tried

cat myfile.txt|awk '{FS = "/t"}{print $4}'

But it just returns blanks.

Any help would be greatful.

Regards
Des

 

[PHV]

And this ?
awk '{FS = "[!]\[/!]t"}{print $4}' myfile.txt

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

 

[dessie1981]

Hi PH,

Yes i tried this and it has some funny output. Just prints the first word in the 4th column and the rest of the file is blank.

I have also created a test file that i know for sure is properly seperated by tabs and i am getting the same results.

Any more ideas would be greatful??

Des

 

[feherke]

Hi

Looks strange. Sure no address before the first block ? Like this :

awk '[red]BEGIN[/red]{FS = "\t"}{print $4}' myfile.txt

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[dessie1981]

no when i use "BEGIN" i just get a blank output, doh!

Des

 

[feherke]

Hi

If do not put the [tt]BEGIN[/tt], then the first line will be already read & parsed when you set the [tt]FS[/tt]. So for the first line have no chance to work.

What I proposed works for me with GNU [tt]awk[/tt] 3.1.1. What [tt]awk[/tt] you use ?

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[dessie1981]

Hi Feherke,

Im using GNU awk 3.1.4

Des

 

[feherke]

Hi

Strange. Just a last idea : did you applied PHV's suggestion too by changing the forward slash ( / ) to backslash ( \ ) ? Because both changes are required : the backslash and the [tt]BEGIN[/tt].

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[dessie1981]

Your right , i missed that , thanks a million for your help!
Works fine now.
I should keep a closer eye to detail on the posts.

Regards
Des