CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ubuntuawksed
Roheet
Roheet

Reputation: 5

Delete every 2nd word of 3rd column a text

I am looking for a way to delete the 3rd column of every other line in a text file. Sample input:

4444    pm  7654    army    3687    anywhere    5650    infection
7332    thesis  0638    nasa    3976    condition   0738    los
3549    partners    7584    fee 3930    move    6535    friends
5693    matter  8801    visits  5350    grid    8917    honest
4039    facing  5453    cp  6101    bedrooms    5268    ford

Desired output:

4444    pm      army    3687    anywhere    5650    infection
7332    thesis  0638    nasa    3976    condition   0738    los
3549    partners    fee 3930    move    6535    friends
5693    matter  8801    visits  5350    grid    8917    honest
4039    facing  cp  6101    bedrooms    5268    ford

I am aware of two commands.

awk '{print $3}' input.txt
sed '1~2d' input.txt

But I am not sure how to combine them.

Looking forward to any sort of help or suggestions.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 90

Answers (5)

agc
agc

Reputation: 8406

Conceptually simpler GNU sed variant of potong's answer:

 sed '1~2s/\S\+//3' file

Upvotes: 0

The fourth bird
The fourth bird

Reputation: 163467

With gnu awk you could get every second row, and use a pattern to capture the first 2 words, match the leading whitespace chars and the third word, and capture the rest after it in group 2.

Then you can print the values of the 2 capture groups.

awk 'NR%2==1 && match($0, /^(\S+\s+\S+)\s+\S+(.*)/, a) {
    print a[1], a[2]
    next
}1' file

Output

4444    pm      army    3687    anywhere        5650    infection
7332    thesis  0638    nasa    3976    condition       0738    los
3549    partners        fee     3930    move    6535    friends
5693    matter  8801    visits  5350    grid    8917    honest
4039    facing  cp      6101    bedrooms        5268    ford

Upvotes: 1

potong
potong

Reputation: 58483

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed 's/\S\+//3;n'  file

Delete the 3rd column, print the result and fetch the next line, repeat.

Upvotes: 2

Loki Astari
Loki Astari

Reputation: 264581

How about:

 awk '{if (NR % 2 == 1){$3="";}print}' input.txt

NR => Row Number starting at 1.
So (NR % 2 == 1) every second row starting at first row.

$3="" => Delete the 3rd word.

print => Print the line

Upvotes: 0

tink
tink

Reputation: 15229

Assuming your file is indeed called input.txt:

sed -r '1~2s/^(\w+\W+\w+\W+)\w+\W+(.*)/\1\2/' input.txt
4444    pm  army    3687    anywhere    5650    infection
7332    thesis  0638    nasa    3976    condition   0738    los
3549    partners    fee 3930    move    6535    friends
5693    matter  8801    visits  5350    grid    8917    honest
4039    facing  cp  6101    bedrooms    5268    ford

The address operator 1~2 (which, btw, is GNU sed specific) does the "modulo", operates on every unevenly numbered line.
The replacement operation s/// remembers the first two lots of word/whitespace pairs, matches the 3rd, and remembers everything after; then replaces the original line with all but the third column.

Upvotes: 0

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