File fields and columns adjustment with awk [LINUX] - regex

Question

I have an issue with columns delimiters adjustment in a file in linux into a database.
I need 14 columns and I use "|" as a delimiter so I applied :
awk -F'|' '{missing=14-NF;if(missing==0){print $0}else{printf "%s",$0;for(i=1;i<=missing-1;i++){printf "|"};print "|"}}' myFile
Suppose I have a row like that:
a|b|c|d|e||f||g||||h|i|
after applying the awk command it will be:
a|b|c|d|e||f||g||||h|i||
and this is not acceptable I need the data to be 14 columns only.
Sample input {In case of 14 fields row]:
a|b|c|d|e||f||g||||h|i
Do nothing
Sample input {In case of extra fields]:
a|b|c|d|e||f||g||||h|i|
ouput:
a|b|c|d|e||f||g||||h|i
Sample Input {In case of less fields}:
a|b|c|d||e||f||g|h
output:
a|b|c|d||e||f||g|h|||

Answer 1

You may use this gnu-awk solution:
awk -v n=14 '
BEGIN {FS=OFS="|"}
{
$0 = gensub(/^(([^|]*\|){13}[^|]*)\|.*/, "\\1", "1")
for (i=NF+1; i<=n; ++i)
$i = ""
} 1' file
a|b|c|d|e||f||g||||h|i
a|b|c|d|e||f||g||||h|i
a|b|c|d||e||f||g|h|||
Where original file is this:
cat file
a|b|c|d|e||f||g||||h|i
a|b|c|d|e||f||g||||h|i|
a|b|c|d||e||f||g|h
Here:
Using gnsub we remove all extra fields
Using for loop we create new fields to make NF = n
If you don't have gnu-awk then following should work on non-gnu awk (tested on BSD awk):
awk -v n=14 '
BEGIN {FS=OFS="|"}
{
for (i=NF+1; i<=n; ++i) $i=""
for (i=n+1; i<=NF; ++i) $i=""
NF = n
} 1' file