split string with multibyte delimiter

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I need to split a string, either using awk or cut or basic unix commands (no programming) , with a multibyte charectar as a delimeter.

Ex:
abcd-efgh-ijkl
split by -efgh- to get two segments abcd & ijkl

Is it possible?

Thanks
A.H.S

2

I'd probably do something like the following with awk (this is from an interactive session)

$ echo "abcd-efgh-ijkl" | awk '{
>   n = split ( $0, a, "-efgh-" )
>   for ( i = 1; i <= n; i++ ) {     
>      printf( "Element %d is %s\n", i, a[ i ] );
>   }
> }'
Element 1 is abcd
Element 2 is ijkl
$

Obviously, change the regex in the split to whatever you need it to be.

Cheers
ZB