How do I use multiple field separators in awk?
I know that if I use
awk -F"[ab]"
, both a and b will be field separators. But what if I need two field separators that both are longer than one letter?
If I want the field separators to be "ab" and "cd", I will not be able to use
awk -F"[abcd]"
. The latter would make both a, b, c and d into field separators.
Suppose you want 'foo' and 'ooo' as words to be record separators:
awk -F'(foo)|(ooo)' '{print $2}' somefile
the regex is (for modern awk, nawk on solaris only) :
-F '(word1)|(word2)|(wordn)'
Each word in parenthesis, separated by a pipe.
Although what you suggested will work just fine, it is even simpler than that. Either of the following will also set foo and ooo as FIELD (not RECORD) separators:
awk -F 'foo|ooo' ...
awk -F '(f|o)oo' ...
and for the original request:
awk -F 'ab|cd' ...
is all that is needed.