UNIX Command Line

field sepearation with "" doesn't work with NON-GNU awk.

below code should work with all types of awk.

echo $add | awk '{for(i=1;i<=length($0);i+=4){printf("%s:",substr($0,i,4))}}'|awk '{sub(/:$/,"")};1'

@Mahesh, thanks. I never knew that. Thanks for the one liner.

hi i got a question. i try to use this but what happens if i try to insert ":" in the text not by 4 in 4. i try to do it by 5 then 8 an the 10 in order or other number o characters

@wecbxxx, do you mean this ?

$ echo $add | sed 's/...../&:/g;s/:$//'

20010:db885:a3000:00000:8a2e0:37073:34

Please let me know if your query was different; thanks

Hello Sir!

I have a text line like this:
20100131142315 Constanta 0.0869

I want to look like this:
2010 01 31 14:23:15 0.0869

So please help me.

Thank you very much in advance
George

@Geo Ghe, thanks for the question. You can use awk substr function for this purpose, something like:

$ echo "20100131142315 Constanta 0.0869" | awk '{
one=substr($1,1,4)
two=substr($1,5,2)
three=substr($1,7,2)
four=substr($1,9,2)
five=substr($1,11,2)
six=substr($1,13,2)
printf ("%s %s %s %s:%s:%s %s\n", one, two, three, four, five, six, $NF)
}'

Output:
2010 01 31 14:23:15 0.0869

You can refer to this post of my blog http://unstableme.blogspot.in/2009/11/convert-fixed-length-file-to-csv-awk.html

hope this helps.

echo $add | awk ' gsub("....","&:") '

> Required output: Insert a colon ':' after every 4 characters in the line...

Some methods to place a ':' char every 4 chars in a line:

1. echo "$add" | perl -ple '$_=join ":", unpack "(A4)*"'

2. echo "$add" | perl -ple 's/(.{4})(?=.{1,4})/$1:/g'

#assuming no whitespace in input
3. set X $(echo "$add" | sed -e 's/.\{4\}/&\n/g'); shift ;
(IFS=":"; echo "$*")

4.
echo "$add" |
sed -e '
s/^/\n/
:loop
s/\n.\{4\}/&:\n/
s/\n//
/\n.\{4\}./bloop
s/\n//
'