CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashawkmultilineseparator
mike
mike

Reputation: 220

AWK record separator set to empty line not working

I am trying to write a simple AWK script which uses empty lines as record separator. I reproduced on my PC the example from the GNU AWK manual Multiple-Line Records. I copy the code below:

# addrs.awk --- simple mailing list program

# Records are separated by blank lines.
# Each line is one field.
BEGIN { RS = "" ; FS = "\n" }

{
      print "Name is:", $1
      print "Address is:", $2
      print "City and State are:", $3
      print ""
}

Input is:

Jane Doe
123 Main Street
Anywhere, SE 12345-6789

John Smith
456 Tree-lined Avenue
Smallville, MW 98765-4321

Files are created on UNIX system.

Required output is:

Name is: Jane Doe
Address is: 123 Main Street
City and State are: Anywhere, SE 12345-6789

Name is: John Smith
Address is: 456 Tree-lined Avenue
City and State are: Smallville, MW 98765-4321

Instead, I get a result which is different from the expected one. What I get is:

Name is: Jane Doe
Address is: 123 Main Street
City and State are: Anywhere, SE 12345-6789

Does anybody know why I am getting the wrong result? AWK finds only 1 record instead of 2, do you know why?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2047

Answers (1)

peak
peak

Reputation: 116880

This is to confirm that:

(1) the given program works properly using awk version 20070501, gawk, or mawk, provided the input file has bare newline ('\n') line endings (as opposed to CR LF).

(2) if the input is a DOS text file, then the result is as the OP stated.

Also, if the input file is a DOS text file, an alternative to dos2unix is to use tr as illustrated here:

$ tr -d '\r' < input.dos.txt | awk ....

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions