How to match anything before and after a pattern in awk? - regex

The following awk code searches for $find among the 2nd column of file.csv and outputs the data found in the 1st column of the first matching row:
awk -v pattern="$find" '$2 ~ pattern { print $1; exit }' file.csv
E.g., given file.csv:
1,panda
2,zebra
3,bobcat
4,lion
5,cat
If $find is set to "cat", it prints "5".
This appears to be only matching the entire contents of the cell, similar to ^cat$ in grep.
How can I adjust this such that it finds the first time the text appears somewhere within the cell, e.g., if $find is set to "cat", it prints "3", because "bobcat" contains the word "cat". In other words, rather than matching the entire cell in the CSV, if the match is found somewhere within the cell, it is sufficient.
Only the first match should be output.
I tried the following, but they do not work as expected:
awk -v pattern="*$find*" '$2 ~ pattern { print $1; exit }' file.csv
I could find no instructions at AWK Language Programming - Regular Expressions for matching anything before and after in awk.

It shouldn't. You are using a csv file and have not set the field separator to ,.
Here is the output you expect:
$ cat file.csv
1,panda
2,zebra
3,bobcat
4,lion
5,cat
$ find=cat
$ awk -F, -v pattern="$find" '$2 ~ pattern { print $1; exit }' file.csv
3
For exact match, use == instead of ~.
$ awk -F, -v pattern="$find" '$2==pattern { print $1; exit }' file.csv
5

In addition to what JS explained there is another way to perform this search in non-regex way for the cases when your search string may contain special regex characters is by using index function:
find='cat'
awk -F, -v pattern="$find" 'index($2, pattern) { print $1; exit }' file.csv
3

Related

print the last letter of each word to make a string using `awk` command

I have this line
UDACBG UYAZAM DJSUBU WJKMBC NTCGCH DIDEVO RHWDAS
i am trying to print the last letter of each word to make a string using awk command
awk '{ print substr($1,6) substr($2,6) substr($3,6) substr($4,6) substr($5,6) substr($6,6) }'
In case I don't know how many characters a word contains, what is the correct command to print the last character of $column, and instead of the repeding substr command, how can I use it only once to print specific characters in different columns
If you have just this one single line to handle you can use
awk '{for (i=1;i<=NF;i++) r = r "" substr($i,length($i))} END{print r}' file
If you have multiple lines in the input:
awk '{r=""; for (i=1;i<=NF;i++) r = r "" substr($i,length($i)); print r}' file
Details:
{for (i=1;i<=NF;i++) r = r "" substr($i,length($i)) - iterate over all fields in the current record, i is the field ID, $i is the field value, and all last chars of each field (retrieved with substr($i,length($i))) are appended to r variable
END{print r} prints the r variable once awk script finishes processing.
In the second solution, r value is cleared upon each line processing start, and its value is printed after processing all fields in the current record.
See the online demo:
#!/bin/bash
s='UDACBG UYAZAM DJSUBU WJKMBC NTCGCH DIDEVO RHWDAS'
awk '{for (i=1;i<=NF;i++) r = r "" substr($i,length($1))} END{print r}' <<< "$s"
Output:
GMUCHOS
Using GNU awk and gensub:
$ gawk '{print gensub(/([^ ]+)([^ ])( |$)/,"\\2","g")}' file
Output:
GMUCHOS
1st solution: With GNU awk you could try following awk program, written and tested eith shown samples.
awk -v RS='.([[:space:]]+|$)' 'RT{gsub(/[[:space:]]+/,"",RT);val=val RT} END{print val}' Input_file
Explanation: Set record separator as any character followed by space OR end of value/line. Then as per OP's requirement remove unnecessary newline/spaces from fetched value; keep on creating val which has matched value of RS, finally when awk program is done with reading whole Input_file print the value of variable then.
2nd solution: Using record separator as null and using match function on values to match regex (.[[:space:]]+)|(.$) to get last letter values only with each match found, keep adding matched values into a variable and at last in END block of awk program print variable's value.
awk -v RS= '
{
while(match($0,/(.[[:space:]]+)|(.$)/)){
val=val substr($0,RSTART,RLENGTH)
$0=substr($0,RSTART+RLENGTH)
}
}
END{
gsub(/[[:space:]]+/,"",val)
print val
}
' Input_file
Simple substitutions on individual lines is the job sed exists to do:
$ sed 's/[^ ]*\([^ ]\) */\1/g' file
GMUCHOS
using many tools
$ tr -s ' ' '\n' <file | rev | cut -c1 | paste -sd'\0'
GMUCHOS
separate the words to lines, reverse so that we can pick the first char easily, and finally paste them back together without a delimiter. Not the shortest solution but I think the most trivial one...
I would harness GNU AWK for this as follows, let file.txt content be
UDACBG UYAZAM DJSUBU WJKMBC NTCGCH DIDEVO RHWDAS
then
awk 'BEGIN{FPAT="[[:alpha:]]\\>";OFS=""}{$1=$1;print}' file.txt
output
GMUCHOS
Explanation: Inform AWK to treat any alphabetic character at end of word and use empty string as output field seperator. $1=$1 is used to trigger line rebuilding with usage of specified OFS. If you want to know more about start/end of word read GNU Regexp Operators.
(tested in gawk 4.2.1)
Another solution with GNU awk:
awk '{$0=gensub(/[^[:space:]]*([[:alpha:]])/, "\\1","g"); gsub(/\s/,"")} 1' file
GMUCHOS
gensub() gets here the characters and gsub() removes the spaces between them.
or using patsplit():
awk 'n=patsplit($0, a, /[[:alpha:]]\>/) { for (i in a) printf "%s", a[i]} i==n {print ""}' file
GMUCHOS
An alternate approach with GNU awk is to use FPAT to split by and keep the content:
gawk 'BEGIN{FPAT="\\S\\>"}
{ s=""
for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) s=s $i
print s
}' file
GMUCHOS
Or more tersely and idiomatic:
gawk 'BEGIN{FPAT="\\S\\>";OFS=""}{$1=$1}1' file
GMUCHOS
(Thanks Daweo for this)
You can also use gensub with:
gawk '{print gensub(/\S*(\S\>)\s*/,"\\1","g")}' file
GMUCHOS
The advantage here of both is that single letter "words" are handled properly:
s2='SINGLE X LETTER Z'
gawk 'BEGIN{FPAT="\\S\\>";OFS=""}{$1=$1}1' <<< "$s2"
EXRZ
gawk '{print gensub(/\S*(\S\>)\s*/,"\\1","g")}' <<< "$s2"
EXRZ
Where the accepted answer and most here do not:
awk '{for (i=1;i<=NF;i++) r = r "" substr($i,length($1))} END{print r}' <<< "$s2"
ER # WRONG
gawk '{print gensub(/([^ ]+)([^ ])( |$)/,"\\2","g")}' <<< "$s2"
EX RZ # WRONG

Using protected wildcard character in awk field separator doesn't work

I have a file that contains paragraphs separated by lines of *(any amount). When I use egrep with the regex of '^\*+$' it works as intended, only displaying the lines that contain only stars.
However, when I use the same expression in awk -F or awk FS, it doesn't work and just prints out the whole document, excluding the lines of stars.
Commands that I tried so far:
awk -F'^\*+$' '{print $1, $2}' msgs
awk -F'/^\*+$/' '{print $1, $2}' msgs
awk 'BEGIN{ FS="/^\*+$/" } ; { print $1,$2 }' msgs
Printing the first field always prints out the whole document, using the first version it excludes the lines with the stars, other versions include everything from the file.
Example input:
Par1 test teststsdsfsfdsf
fdsfdsfdsftesyt
fdsfdsfdsf fddsteste345sdfs
***
Par2 dsadawe232343a5edsfe
43s4esfsd s45s45e4t rfgsd45
***
Par3 dsadasd
fasfasf53sdf sfdsf s45 sdfs
dfsf dsf
***
Par4 dasdasda r3ar d afa fs
ds fgdsfgsdfaser ar53d f
***
Par 5 dasdawr3r35a
fsada35awfds46 s46 sdfsds5 34sdf
***
Expected output for print $1:
Par1 test teststsdsfsfdsf fdsfdsfdsftesyt fdsfdsfdsf fddsteste345sdfs
EDIT: Added example input and expected output
Strings used as regexps in awk are parsed twice:
to turn them into a regexp, and
to use them as a regexp.
So if you want to use a string as a regexp (including any time you assign a Field Separator or Record Separator as a regexp) then you need to double any escapes as each iteration of parsing will consume one of them. See https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Computed-Regexps for details.
Good (a literal/constant regexp):
$ echo 'a(b)c' | awk '$0 ~ /\(b)/'
a(b)c
Bad (a poorly-written dynamic/computed regexp):
$ echo 'a(b)c' | awk '$0 ~ "\(b)"'
awk: cmd. line:1: warning: escape sequence `\(' treated as plain `('
a(b)c
Good (a well-written dynamic/computed regexp):
$ echo 'a(b)c' | awk '$0 ~ "\\(b)"'
a(b)c
but IMHO if you're having to double escapes to make a char literal then it's clearer to use a bracket expression instead:
$ echo 'a(b)c' | awk '$0 ~ "[(]b)"'
a(b)c
Also, ^ in a regexp means "start of string" which is only matched at the start of all the input, just like $ would only be matched at the end of all of the output. ^ does not mean "start of line" as some documents/scripts may lead you to believe. It only appears to mean that in grep and sed because they are line-oriented and so usually the script is being compared to 1 line at a time, but awk isnt line-oriented, it's record-oriented and so the input being compared to the regexp isn't necessarily just a line (the same is true in sed if you read multiple lines into its hold space).
So to match a line of *s as a Record Separator (RS) assuming you're using gawk or some other awk that can treat a multi-char RS as a regexp, you'd have to write this regexp:
(^|\n)[*]+(\n|$)
but be aware that also matches the newlines before the first and after the last *s on the target lines so you need to handle that appropriately in your code.
It seems like this is what you're really trying to do:
$ awk -v RS='(^|\n)[*]+(\n|$)' 'NR==1{$1=$1; print}' file
Par1 test teststsdsfsfdsf fdsfdsfdsftesyt fdsfdsfdsf fddsteste345sdfs

Regular expression to search column in text file

I am having trouble getting a regular expression that will search for an input term in the specified column. If the term is found in that column, then it needs to output that whole line.
These are my variables:
sreg = search word #Example: Adam
file = text file #Example: Contacts.txt
sfield = column number #Example: 1
the text file is in this format with a space being the field seperator, with many contact entries:
First Last Email Phone Category
Adam aster junfmr# 8473847548 word
Jeff Williams 43wadsfddf# 940342221995 friend
JOhn smart qwer#qwer 999999393 enemy
yooun yeall adada 111223123 other
zefir sentr jjdirutk#jd 8847394578 other
I've tried with no success:
grep "$sreg" "$file" | cut -d " " -f"$sfield"-"$sfield"
awk -F, '{ if ($sreg == $sfield) print $0 }' "$file"
awk -v s="$sreg" -v c="$sfield" '$c == s { print $0 }' "$file"
Thanks for any help!
awk may be the best solution for this:
awk -v field="$field" -v name="$name" '$field==name' "$file"
This checks if the field number $field has the value $name. If so, awk automatically prints the full line that contains it.
For example:
$ field=1
$ name="Adam"
$ file="your_file"
$ awk -v field="$field" -v name="$name" '$field==name' "$file"
Adam aster junfmr# 8473847548 word
As you can see, we give the parameters using -v var="$bash_var", so that you can use them inside awk.
Also, the space is the field separator, so you don't need to specify it since it is the default.
This works for me:
awk -v f="$sfield" -v reg="$sreg" '{if ($f ~ reg) {print $0}}' "$file"
Major problem is that you need an indirection from $sfield (ex, "1") to $($sfield) (ex, $1).
I tried using backtricks `, and also using ${!sfield}, but they don't work in awk, as awk does not accept this. Finally I found the way of passing variable into awk, converting to awk internal variabls (using -v).
Within awk, I found you can not even access variables outside. So I had to pass $sreg as well.
Update: I think using "~" instead of "==" is better because the original requirement said matchi==ng a regular expression.
For example,
sreg=Ad

How to print matched regex pattern using awk?

Using awk, I need to find a word in a file that matches a regex pattern.
I only want to print the word matched with the pattern.
So if in the line, I have:
xxx yyy zzz
And pattern:
/yyy/
I want to only get:
yyy
EDIT:
thanks to kurumi i managed to write something like this:
awk '{
for(i=1; i<=NF; i++) {
tmp=match($i, /[0-9]..?.?[^A-Za-z0-9]/)
if(tmp) {
print $i
}
}
}' $1
and this is what i needed :) thanks a lot!
This is the very basic
awk '/pattern/{ print $0 }' file
ask awk to search for pattern using //, then print out the line, which by default is called a record, denoted by $0. At least read up the documentation.
If you only want to get print out the matched word.
awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){ if($i=="yyy"){print $i} } }' file
It sounds like you are trying to emulate GNU's grep -o behaviour. This will do that providing you only want the first match on each line:
awk 'match($0, /regex/) {
print substr($0, RSTART, RLENGTH)
}
' file
Here's an example, using GNU's awk implementation (gawk):
awk 'match($0, /a.t/) {
print substr($0, RSTART, RLENGTH)
}
' /usr/share/dict/words | head
act
act
act
act
aft
ant
apt
art
art
art
Read about match, substr, RSTART and RLENGTH in the awk manual.
After that you may wish to extend this to deal with multiple matches on the same line.
gawk can get the matching part of every line using this as action:
{ if (match($0,/your regexp/,m)) print m[0] }
match(string, regexp [, array])
If array is present, it is cleared,
and then the zeroth element of array is set to the entire portion of
string matched by regexp. If regexp contains parentheses, the
integer-indexed elements of array are set to contain the portion of
string matching the corresponding parenthesized subexpression.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#String-Functions
If Perl is an option, you can try this:
perl -lne 'print $1 if /(regex)/' file
To implement case-insensitive matching, add the i modifier
perl -lne 'print $1 if /(regex)/i' file
To print everything AFTER the match:
perl -lne 'if ($found){print} else{if (/regex(.*)/){print $1; $found++}}' textfile
To print the match and everything after the match:
perl -lne 'if ($found){print} else{if (/(regex.*)/){print $1; $found++}}' textfile
If you are only interested in the last line of input and you expect to find only one match (for example a part of the summary line of a shell command), you can also try this very compact code, adopted from How to print regexp matches using `awk`?:
$ echo "xxx yyy zzz" | awk '{match($0,"yyy",a)}END{print a[0]}'
yyy
Or the more complex version with a partial result:
$ echo "xxx=a yyy=b zzz=c" | awk '{match($0,"yyy=([^ ]+)",a)}END{print a[1]}'
b
Warning: the awk match() function with three arguments only exists in gawk, not in mawk
Here is another nice solution using a lookbehind regex in grep instead of awk. This solution has lower requirements to your installation:
$ echo "xxx=a yyy=b zzz=c" | grep -Po '(?<=yyy=)[^ ]+'
b
Off topic, this can be done using the grep also, just posting it here in case if anyone is looking for grep solution
echo 'xxx yyy zzze ' | grep -oE 'yyy'
Using sed can also be elegant in this situation. Example (replace line with matched group "yyy" from line):
$ cat testfile
xxx yyy zzz
yyy xxx zzz
$ cat testfile | sed -r 's#^.*(yyy).*$#\1#g'
yyy
yyy
Relevant manual page: https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html#Back_002dreferences-and-Subexpressions
If you know what column the text/pattern you're looking for (e.g. "yyy") is in, you can just check that specific column to see if it matches, and print it.
For example, given a file with the following contents, (called asdf.txt)
xxx yyy zzz
to only print the second column if it matches the pattern "yyy", you could do something like this:
awk '$2 ~ /yyy/ {print $2}' asdf.txt
Note that this will also match basically any line where the second column has a "yyy" in it, like these:
xxx yyyz zzz
xxx zyyyz
echo "abc123def" | awk '
function MATCH(haystack, needle, ltrim, rtrim)
{
if(ltrim == 0 && !length(ltrim))
ltrim = 0;
if(rtrim == 0 && !length(rtrim))
rtrim = 0;
return substr(haystack, match(haystack, needle) + ltrim, RLENGTH - ltrim - rtrim);
}
{
print $0 " - " MATCH($0, "123"); # 123
print $0 " - " MATCH($0, "[0-9]*d", 0, 1); # 123
print $0 " - " MATCH($0, "1234"); # Nothing printed
}'

AWK Matching Positive and Negative Numbers

I have a data that looks like this:
-1033
-
222
100
-30
-
10
What I want to do is to capture all the numbers excluding "dash only" entry.
Why my awk below failed?
awk '$4 != "-" {print $4}'
Your awk script says
If the fourth field is not a dash, print it out
However, you want to print it out if the line is not a dash
awk '$0 != "-"'
Default action is to print so no body is needed.
If you want to print group of numbers, you can use a GNU awk extension if you use gawk. It allows splitting records using regular expressions:
gawk 'BEGIN { RS="(^|\n)-($|\n)" } { print "Numbers:\n" $0 }'
Now, instead of lines, it takes a group of numbers separated by a line containing only -. Setting the field separator (FS) to a newline allows you to iterate over the numbers within such a group:
gawk 'BEGIN { FS="\n"; RS="(^|\n)-($|\n)" }
{ print "Numbers:"; for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) print " *: " $i }'
However I agree with other answers. If you just want to filter out lines matching some text, grep is the better tool for that.
Why are you checking $4? It appears you should check $1 or $0 as litb said.
But awk is a heavyweight tool for this job. Try
grep -v '^-$'
To remove lines containing only a dash or
grep -v '^ *- *$'
To remove lines containing only a dash and possibly some space characters.
Assuming that your data file is actually multi-column, and that the values are in column 4, the following will work:
awk '$4 != "-" {print $4} {}'
It prints the value only where it isn't "-". Your version will probably print the value regardless (or twice) since the default action is to print. Adding the {} makes the default action "do nothing".
If the data is actually as shown (one column only), you should be using $1 rather than $4 - I wouldn't use $0 since that's the whole line and it appears you have spaces at the end of your first two lines which would cause $0 to be "-1033 " and "- ".
But, if it were a single column, I wouldn't use awk at all but rather:
grep -v '^-$'
grep -v '^ *- *$'
the second allowing for spaces on either side of the "-" character.