Using AWK to parse a delimited field

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi everyone!

How can I parse a delimited field using AWK?

For example, if I have lastName#firstName or lastName*firstName. I'd like an AWK script that would return lastName and then another that would return firstName? Is this possible?

2

You mean like this?:


#  echo "Fat#Bob" | nawk -F"[*#]" '{print $2,$1}'
Bob Fat
#  echo "Fat*Bob" | nawk -F"[*#]" '{print $2,$1}'
Bob Fat

HTH

3

No I meant more like if I have a string like fat#bob

I get...

Using one AWK script would return the last name, in this case fat.

Another AWK script would return the first name, in this case bob.

4

Not necessary to use awk:

Name="lastName#firstName"
LastName=${Name%\#*}
FirstName=${Name##*\#}
5 
# echo lastName#firstName |awk -F# '{print $1}'
lastName
# echo lastName#firstName |awk -F# '{print $2}'
firstName
6

Like so?

$ s="fat#bob"
$ echo ${s%#*}
fat
$ echo ${s#*#}
bob
7

@Scrutinizer, it doesn't give the right output on a HP-UX system:

$ s="fat#bob"
$ echo ${s%#*}
fat#bob
$ echo ${s#*#}
fat#bob

Regards

8

Which version of HP-UX and which shell are you using?

$ s="fat#bob";echo ${s%#*};echo ${s#*#}
fat
bob
$ uname -sr
HP-UX B.11.11
$ ps -p$$
   PID TTY       TIME COMMAND
 23283 pts/ta    0:00 ksh
$

Consider that the above mentioned parameter expansion is required by SUS/POSIX, so on your system you may need to use a POSIX compliant shell.

---------- Post updated at 12:37 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:31 PM ----------

I see that on HP-UX B.11.11 /usr/bin/sh(a M-ksh88f) is labeled as POSIX shell.

I dont know why it doesn't support the parameter expansion mentioned above.

9

The version on my system is:

uname -sr
HP-UX B.11.00
10

Yes, HP-UX's /usr/bin/sh is a ksh Version M-11/16/88f and it doesn't support that parameter expansion.

On those systems /usr/bin/ksh, which is actually ksh88c, supports it.

11

Hi Franklin, your version seems a tad old (Support for HP-UX 11.0 (B.11.00) ended December 2006.). Do you have to escape the # to get it to work? Perhaps the have been bug fixes?

12

Right, it works well if I escape the # like:

s="fat#bob"
echo ${s%\#*}
echo ${s#*\#}

Regards

13

OK :slight_smile:
So ksh Version M-11/16/88f supports that parameter expansion, but it has some bugs (or this behavior is documented).

14

Thanks for all the help everyone! :b: