How to change values in certain column only in every line (any script)

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Let say in a file I have lines of data like this :

13;2073;461496;15075341;3;001f7d3a;2042063674;
13;2074;461446;15080241;6;001ed33a;2042020154;
13;2075;461401;15085270;6;001f593b;2042054459;
13;2076;461381;15087160;6;001f7483;2042061443;
13;2077;461419;15083419;6;001eca1a;2042017818;

I want to change the values in the 6th column in every line (001f7d3a, 001ed33a, 001f593b, 001f7483 and 001eca1a) to different values.

Can anybody give me any script (unix or perl) to perform this task? Your help is very much appreciated.. cuz I can't afford to change the values in column 6 manually, there are thousands of lines actually :confused:! THANKS

2

what new values do you want....

(awk is most likely your friend here...)

3

new values would be:
A1000001EFFFF1
A1000002000000
A1000002100000
A1000002200000
A1000002300000

4

Assuming you have the new values in file2:

awk -F";" '{getline $6 < "file2"}1' OFS=";" file