Grab terms leaving spacings intact

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi All,

I have an input below.
I would want to print the 2nd to 5th term leaving the same number of spaces in between each term to be intact.
Here in the example, there are 4 spacings between term " ABC " and " 111 ", and i tried the below awk codes but they don;t work. Can anybody give me some advice on this ?

Input:

BBB ABC    111 222 333

awk '{print ($2    $3 $4 $5)}' input

awk '{printf ("%s    %s %s %s", $2, $3, $4, $5)}' input
2

Does Your data always start at column (character) 5?
In that case...
lakris@Lakrix:~/Projects/scripts$ echo "BBB ABC 111 222 333"|cut -c5-
lakris@Lakrix:~/Projects/scripts$ cat input
BBB ABC 111 222 333
QQQ ABC 111 222 333
VVV ZXC 111 222 333
BBB ABC 111 222 333
BBB ABC 111 222 333
BBB ABC 111 222 333
lakris@Lakrix:~/Projects/scripts$ cut -c5- input
ABC 111 222 333
ABC 111 222 333
ZXC 111 222 333
ABC 111 222 333
ABC 111 222 333
ABC 111 222 333
lakris@Lakrix:~/Projects/scripts$

3

Hi Lakris,

Yes, and thanks for your help!!

4

np! Only glad to help.
:wink: