CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashawk
Bhawan
Bhawan

Reputation: 2491

Change some field separators in awk

I have a input file 1.txt 

[email protected]:1802752:2222:
[email protected]:1802756:111113
[email protected]:xxmyaduh:13@;:3A

and I want an output file: out.txt 

[email protected]||o||1802752||o||2222:
[email protected]||o||1802756||o||111113
[email protected]||o||xxmyaduh||o||13@;:3A

I want to replace the first two ':' in 1.txt with '||o||', but with the script I am using

awk -F: '{print $1,$2,$3}' OFS="||o||" 3.txt

But it is not giving the expected output. Any help would be highly appreciated.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 166

Answers (4)

user8854776
user8854776

Reputation: 201

Suppose if we need to replace first 2 occurrence of : use below code

Like this you can change as per your requirement suppose if you need to change for first 7 occurences change {1..2} to {1..7}.

Out put will be saved in orginal file. it wont display the output

 for i in {1..2}
> do
> sed -i "s/:/||o||/1" p.txt
> done

Upvotes: 0

choroba
choroba

Reputation: 241868

Perl solution:

perl -pe 's/:/||o||/ for $_, $_' 1.txt
  • -p reads the input line by line and prints each line after processing it
  • s/// is similar to substitution you might know from sed
  • for in postposition runs the previous command for every element in the following list
  • $_ keeps the line being processed

For higher numbers, you can use for ($_) x N where N is the number. For example, to substitute the first 7 occurrences:

perl -pe 's/:/||o||/ for ($_) x 7' 1.txt

Upvotes: 4

Eily
Eily

Reputation: 141

Perl solution also, but I think the idea can apply to other languages: using the limit parameter of split:

perl -nE 'print join q(||o||), split q(:), $_, 3' file

(q quotes because I'm on Windows)

Upvotes: 0

RavinderSingh13
RavinderSingh13

Reputation: 133518

Following sed may also help you in same.

sed 's/:/||o||/;s/:/||o||/'  Input_file

Explanation: Simply substituting 1st occurrence of colon with ||o|| and then 2nd occurrence of colon now becomes 1st occurrence of colon now and substituting that colon with ||o|| as per OP's requirement.

Upvotes: 3

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