I wrote some awk script to process some data, and found the result unexpected.
I found the root cause is that the following string comparison is not correct
echo "59558711052462309110012 59558711052462313120012"|awk '{print $1;print $2;print ($1==$2)?"eq":"ne"}'
The result is
59558711052462309110012
59558711052462313120012
eq
I guess the reason is that awk treats the two numeric strings as numbers, and cuts off them to compare.
My question is that how can I strictly compare the two strings in awk.
Force a string comparison by telling awk that at least one of the operands IS a string by concatenating that operand with the null string:
echo "59558711052462309110012 59558711052462313120012"|
awk '{print $1;print $2;print ($1""==$2)?"eq":"ne"}'
59558711052462309110012
59558711052462313120012
ne
#EdMorton's solution already fails when a positive sign exists in front of it, all else being equal :
echo '59558711052462309110012' | mawk '1; 1' |
mawk '($++NF = (!_?_="+":_=__) $!__)^__' | ...
... | awk ' { print $0, "\f\r\t" ( ($1""==$2) ? "eq" : "ne" ) }'
1 59558711052462309110012 +59558711052462309110012
ne
2 59558711052462309110012 59558711052462309110012
eq
Related
Let's say I have a file like so:
test.txt
one
two
three
I'd like to get the following output: one|two|three
And am currently using this command: gawk -v ORS='|' '{ print $0 }' test.txt
Which gives: one|two|three|
How can I print it so that the last | isn't there?
Here's one way to do it:
$ seq 1 | awk -v ORS= 'NR>1{print "|"} 1; END{print "\n"}'
1
$ seq 3 | awk -v ORS= 'NR>1{print "|"} 1; END{print "\n"}'
1|2|3
With paste:
$ seq 1 | paste -sd'|'
1
$ seq 3 | paste -sd'|'
1|2|3
Convert one column to one row with field separator:
awk '{$1=$1} 1' FS='\n' OFS='|' RS='' file
Or in another notation:
awk -v FS='\n' -v OFS='|' -v RS='' '{$1=$1} 1' file
Output:
one|two|three
See: 8 Powerful Awk Built-in Variables – FS, OFS, RS, ORS, NR, NF, FILENAME, FNR
awk solutions work great. Here is tr + sed solution:
tr '\n' '|' < file | sed 's/\|$//'
1|2|3
just flatten it :
gawk/mawk 'BEGIN { FS = ORS; RS = "^[\n]*$"; OFS = "|"
} NF && ( $NF ? NF=NF : —-NF )'
ascii | = octal \174 = hex 0x7C. The reason for —-NF is that more often than not, the input includes a trailing new line, which makes field count 1 too many and result in
1|2|3|
Both NF=NF and --NF are similar concepts to $1=$1. Empty inputs, regardless of whether trailing new lines exist or not, would result in nothing printed.
At the OFS spot, you can delimit it with any string combo you like instead of being constrained by tr, which has inconsistent behavior. For instance :
gtr '\012' '高' # UTF8 高 = \351\253\230 = xE9 xAB x98
on bsd-tr, \n will get replaced by the unicode properly 1高2高3高 , but if you're on gnu-tr, it would only keep the leading byte of the unicode, and result in
1 \351 2 \351 . . .
For unicode equiv-classes, bsd-tr works as expected while gtr '[=高=]' '\v' results in
gtr: ?\230: equivalence class operand must be a single character
and if u attempt equiv-classes with an arbitrary non-ASCII byte, bsd-tr does nothing while gnu-tr would gladly oblige, even if it means slicing straight through UTF8-compliant characters :
g3bn 77138 | (g)tr '[=\224=]' '\v'
bsd-tr : 77138=Koyote 코요태 KYT✜ 高耀太
gnu-tr : 77138=Koyote ?
?
태 KYT✜ 高耀太
I would do it following way, using GNU AWK, let test.txt content be
one
two
three
then
awk '{printf NR==1?"%s":"|%s", $0}' test.txt
output
one|two|three
Explanation: If it is first line print that line content sans trailing newline, otherwise | followed by line content sans trailing newline. Note that I assumed that test.txt has not trailing newline, if this is not case test this solution before applying it.
(tested in gawk 5.0.1)
Also you can try this with awk:
awk '{ORS = (NR%3 ? "|" : RS)} 1' file
one|two|three
% is the modulo operator and NR%3 ? "|" : RS is a ternary expression.
See Ed Morton's explanation here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/55998710/14259465
With a GNU sed, you can pass -z option to match line breaks, and thus all you need is replace each newline but the last one at the end of string:
sed -z 's/\n\(.\)/|\1/g' test.txt
perl -0pe 's/\n(?!\z)/|/g' test.txt
perl -pe 's/\n/|/g if !eof' test.txt
See the online demo.
Details:
s - substitution command
\n\(.\) - an LF char followed with any one char captured into Group 1 (so \n at the end of string won't get matched)
|\1 - a | char and the captured char
g - all occurrences.
The first perl command matches any LF char (\n) not at the end of string ((?!\z)) after slurping the whole file into a single string input (again, to make \n visible to the regex engine).
The second perl command replaces an LF char at the end of each line except the one at the end of file (eof).
To make the changes inline add -i option (mind this is a GNU sed example):
sed -i -z 's/\n\(.\)/|\1/g' test.txt
perl -i -0pe 's/\n(?!\z)/|/g' test.txt
perl -i -pe 's/\n/|/g if !eof' test.txt
I have a speedtest-cli skript and try to awk the result. I want to get the downloadspeed as integer, so I can compair with other results in an If, then.. condition.
part of my skript:
#!/bin/sh
speedtest-cli | awk '/Download:/ {print $2} ' > /root/tmp1
read speed1 < /root/tmp1
speedtest-cli | awk '/Download:/ {print $2} ' > /root/tmp2;
read speed2 < /root/tmp2
if [ $speed1 -gt $speed2 ];then
echo "test";fi
The problem is, that my awk result (75.27) isnt saved as integer! When it comes to if, I get an error:
sh: 75.27: bad number
I also would perfer to define the variable direct from the awk result, but that doesnt work!
speedtest-cli | var=$(awk '/Download:/ {print $2} ' > /root/tmp1)
How can I "awk" the speedtest-cli result, to get an variable that can be compaired in an if...then conditin?
please help,
thx greetings Igor
if you want to compare floating point numbers you can do within awk or with bc -l
for example
speed1=$(speedtest-cli | awk '/Download:/{print $2}')
...
speed2=$(speedtest-cli | awk '/Download:/{print $2}')
if (( $(echo "$speed1 > $speed2" | bc -l) )); then ...
another alternative is if you want to compare them as integers but don't want to lose digits due to rounding, multiply them with a large value and convert to int.
speed1000=$(speedtest-cli | awk '/Download:/{print int($2*1000)}')
...
now bash can handle integer comparisons...
I'm working on an awk one-liner to substitute commas to tabs in a file ( and swap \\N for missing values in preparation for MySQL select into).
The following link http://www.unix.com/unix-for-dummies-questions-and-answers/211941-awk-output-field-separator.html (at the bottom) suggest the following approach to avoid looping through the variables:
echo a b c d | awk '{gsub(OFS,";")}1'
head -n1 flatfile.tab | awk -F $'\t' '{for(j=1;j<=NF;j++){gsub(" +","\\N",$j)}gsub(OFS,",")}1'
Clearly, the trailing 1 (can be a number, char) triggers the printing of the entire record. Could you please explain why this is working?
SO also has Print all Fields with AWK separated by OFS , but in that post it seems unclear why this is working.
Thanks.
Awk evaluates 1 or any number other than 0 as a true-statement. Since, true statements without the action statements part are equal to { print $0 }. It prints the line.
For example:
$ echo "hello" | awk '1'
hello
$ echo "hello" | awk '0'
$
If the field separator is the empty string, each character becomes a separate field
$ echo hello | awk -F '' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
5,h,e,l,l,o
However, if FS is a regex that can possibly match zero times, the same behaviour does not occur:
$ echo hello | awk -F ' *' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
1,hello
Anyone know why that is? I could not find anything in the gawk manual. Is FS="" just a special case?
I'm most interested in understanding why the 2nd case does not split the record into more fields. It's as if awk is treating FS=" *" like FS=" +"
Interesting question!
I just pulled gnu-awk 4.1.0's codes, I think the answer we could find in the file field.c.
line 371:
* re_parse_field --- parse fields using a regexp.
*
* This is called both from get_field() and from do_split()
* via (*parse_field)(). This variation is for when FS is a regular
* expression -- either user-defined or because RS=="" and FS==" "
*/
static long
re_parse_field(lo...
also this line: (line 425):
if (REEND(rp, scan) == RESTART(rp, scan)) { /* null match */
here is the case of <space>* matching in your question. The implementation didn't increment the nf, that is, it thinks the whole line is one single field. Note this function was used in do_split() function too.
First, if FS is null string, gawk separates each char into its own field. gawk's doc has clearly written this, also in codes, we could see:
line 613:
* null_parse_field --- each character is a separate field
*
* This is called both from get_field() and from do_split()
* via (*parse_field)(). This variation is for when FS is the null string.
*/
static long
null_parse_field(long up_to,
If the FS has single character, awk won't consider it as regex. This was mentioned in doc too. Also in codes:
#line 667
* sc_parse_field --- single character field separator
*
* This is called both from get_field() and from do_split()
* via (*parse_field)(). This variation is for when FS is a single character
* other than space.
*/
static long
sc_parse_field(l
if we read the function, no regex match handling was done there.
In the comments of the function re_parse_field(), and sc_parse_field(), we see do_split invokes them too. It explains why we have 1 in following command instead of 3:
kent$ echo "foo"|awk '{split($0,a,/ */);print length(a)}'
1
Note, to avoid to make the post too long, I didn't paste the complete codes here, we can find the codes here:
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gawk.git/
As was mentioned, an empty field separator generates undefined behavior; the same code will give different results on different platforms / flavors of awk. For example (all Mac OSX 10.8.5):
> echo hello | awk -F '' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
awk: field separator FS is empty
1,hello
So awk complains, but keeps going.
Let's look at some other examples:
> echo hello | awk -F '.' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
1,hello
A . by itself is not considered a regular expression
> echo hello | awk -F '[.]' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
1,hello
Still nothing
> echo hello | awk -F '.?' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
6,,,,,,
Now we have something like a regex: .? is "zero or one character". It is expanded to one character (which is consumed), so the output is "a whole lot of nothings"
> echo hello | awk -F '*' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
1,hello
Not a regular expression
> echo hello | awk -F '.*' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
2,,
A regular expression that consumes the entire thing
> echo hello | awk -F 'l' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
3,he,,o
Match the letter l twice - two empty strings
> echo hello | awk -F 'ell' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
2,h,o
Match all of ell at once
> echo hello | awk -F '.?|' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
awk: illegal primary in regular expression .?| at
input record number 1, file
source line number 1
Attempt to be clever: sometimes an | with empty string on one side will match "anything" but awk's regex engine doesn't like it.
Conclusion - the regular expressions cannot match "empty", and whatever is matched is consumed. Attempts to use (?:.) or even (?=.) generate errors.
It seems to be a special case in gawk.
Traditionally, the behavior of FS equal to "" was not defined. In this
case, most versions of Unix awk simply treat the entire record as only
having one field. (d.c.) In compatibility mode (see Options), if FS is
the null string, then gawk also behaves this way.
What POSIX has to say about this:
If FS is a null string, the behavior is unspecified.
So the gawk behaviour is implementation-specific and sort of explains why your two examples don't yield the same output.
Another data point: gawk and perl disagree on how to do this:
$ perl -E '$,=","; $s="hello"; $r=qr( *); #s=split($r,$s); say scalar(#s), #s'
5,h,e,l,l,o
$ gawk 'BEGIN {s="hello";r=" *";n=split(s,a,r); print n,a[n]; if (s~r) print "match"}'
1 hello
match
$ gawk 'BEGIN {s="hello";r=""; n=split(s,a,r); print n,a[n]; if (s~r) print "match"}'
5 o
match
How to split the string when it contains pipe symbols | in it.
I want to split them to be in array.
I tried
echo "12:23:11" | awk '{split($0,a,":"); print a[3] a[2] a[1]}'
Which works fine. If my string is like "12|23|11" then how do I split them into an array?
Have you tried:
echo "12|23|11" | awk '{split($0,a,"|"); print a[3],a[2],a[1]}'
To split a string to an array in awk we use the function split():
awk '{split($0, array, ":")}'
# \/ \___/ \_/
# | | |
# string | delimiter
# |
# array to store the pieces
If no separator is given, it uses the FS, which defaults to the space:
$ awk '{split($0, array); print array[2]}' <<< "a:b c:d e"
c:d
We can give a separator, for example ::
$ awk '{split($0, array, ":"); print array[2]}' <<< "a:b c:d e"
b c
Which is equivalent to setting it through the FS:
$ awk -F: '{split($0, array); print array[2]}' <<< "a:b c:d e"
b c
In GNU Awk you can also provide the separator as a regexp:
$ awk '{split($0, array, ":*"); print array[2]}' <<< "a:::b c::d e
#note multiple :
b c
And even see what the delimiter was on every step by using its fourth parameter:
$ awk '{split($0, array, ":*", sep); print array[2]; print sep[1]}' <<< "a:::b c::d e"
b c
:::
Let's quote the man page of GNU awk:
split(string, array [, fieldsep [, seps ] ])
Divide string into pieces separated by fieldsep and store the pieces in array and the separator strings in the seps array. The first piece is stored in array[1], the second piece in array[2], and so forth. The string value of the third argument, fieldsep, is a regexp describing where to split string (much as FS can be a regexp describing where to split input records). If fieldsep is omitted, the value of FS is used. split() returns the number of elements created. seps is a gawk extension, with seps[i] being the separator string between array[i] and array[i+1]. If fieldsep is a single space, then any leading whitespace goes into seps[0] and any trailing whitespace goes into seps[n], where n is the return value of split() (i.e., the number of elements in array).
Please be more specific! What do you mean by "it doesn't work"?
Post the exact output (or error message), your OS and awk version:
% awk -F\| '{
for (i = 0; ++i <= NF;)
print i, $i
}' <<<'12|23|11'
1 12
2 23
3 11
Or, using split:
% awk '{
n = split($0, t, "|")
for (i = 0; ++i <= n;)
print i, t[i]
}' <<<'12|23|11'
1 12
2 23
3 11
Edit: on Solaris you'll need to use the POSIX awk (/usr/xpg4/bin/awk) in order to process 4000 fields correctly.
I do not like the echo "..." | awk ... solution as it calls unnecessary fork and execsystem calls.
I prefer a Dimitre's solution with a little twist
awk -F\| '{print $3 $2 $1}' <<<'12|23|11'
Or a bit shorter version:
awk -F\| '$0=$3 $2 $1' <<<'12|23|11'
In this case the output record put together which is a true condition, so it gets printed.
In this specific case the stdin redirection can be spared with setting an awk internal variable:
awk -v T='12|23|11' 'BEGIN{split(T,a,"|");print a[3] a[2] a[1]}'
I used ksh quite a while, but in bash this could be managed by internal string manipulation. In the first case the original string is split by internal terminator. In the second case it is assumed that the string always contains digit pairs separated by a one character separator.
T='12|23|11';echo -n ${T##*|};T=${T%|*};echo ${T#*|}${T%|*}
T='12|23|11';echo ${T:6}${T:3:2}${T:0:2}
The result in all cases is
112312
Actually awk has a feature called 'Input Field Separator Variable' link. This is how to use it. It's not really an array, but it uses the internal $ variables. For splitting a simple string it is easier.
echo "12|23|11" | awk 'BEGIN {FS="|";} { print $1, $2, $3 }'
I know this is kind of old question, but I thought maybe someone like my trick. Especially since this solution not limited to a specific number of items.
# Convert to an array
_ITEMS=($(echo "12|23|11" | tr '|' '\n'))
# Output array items
for _ITEM in "${_ITEMS[#]}"; do
echo "Item: ${_ITEM}"
done
The output will be:
Item: 12
Item: 23
Item: 11
Joke? :)
How about echo "12|23|11" | awk '{split($0,a,"|"); print a[3] a[2] a[1]}'
This is my output:
p2> echo "12|23|11" | awk '{split($0,a,"|"); print a[3] a[2] a[1]}'
112312
so I guess it's working after all..
echo "12|23|11" | awk '{split($0,a,"|"); print a[3] a[2] a[1]}'
should work.
echo "12|23|11" | awk '{split($0,a,"|"); print a[3] a[2] a[1]}'
code
awk -F"|" '{split($0,a); print a[1],a[2],a[3]}' <<< '12|23|11'
output
12 23 11
The challenge: parse and store split strings with spaces and insert them into variables.
Solution: best and simple choice for you would be convert the strings list into array and then parse it into variables with indexes. Here's an example how you can convert and access the array.
Example: parse disk space statistics on each line:
sudo df -k | awk 'NR>1' | while read -r line; do
#convert into array:
array=($line)
#variables:
filesystem="${array[0]}"
size="${array[1]}"
capacity="${array[4]}"
mountpoint="${array[5]}"
echo "filesystem:$filesystem|size:$size|capacity:$capacity|mountpoint:$mountpoint"
done
#output:
filesystem:/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1|size:4000|usage:40%|mountpoint:/
filesystem:/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s2|size:5000|usage:50%|mountpoint:/usr
filesystem:/proc|size:0|usage:0%|mountpoint:/proc
filesystem:mnttab|size:0|usage:0%|mountpoint:/etc/mnttab
filesystem:fd|size:1000|usage:10%|mountpoint:/dev/fd
filesystem:swap|size:9000|usage:9%|mountpoint:/var/run
filesystem:swap|size:1500|usage:15%|mountpoint:/tmp
filesystem:/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3|size:8000|usage:80%|mountpoint:/export
awk -F'['|'] -v '{print $1"\t"$2"\t"$3}' file <<<'12|23|11'