As per title and much apprecieated!
Please modify the example
awk '{
key=substr($0,1,10)
key1=substr($0,1,21)
if(arr[key])
{
arr[key]=1
\}
else
\{
arr[key]=$0
\}
\}
END \{for \(i in arr\) \{print arr[i]\} \} ' file_name
dhanamurthy, thank you for your reply, but could you please specify how the array name "arr" was defined outside of awk snippet (in shell)?
and the $0 means every line from the file? so your statement key=substr($0,1,10) means the 1-10 characters of the lines in the file, but you use it like this arr[key], sorry I do not understand.