Re: Vá: awk FIELDWIDTHS howto?

[judd@wadsworth.org]

On  9 Jan, Sergio Cuéllar Valdés wrote:

> 2008/1/9, Paul Csanyi <csanyipal@gmail.com>:
>> 2008/1/9, Sergio Cuéllar Valdés <herrsergio@gmail.com>:
>> > 2008/1/9, Paul Csanyi <csanyipal@gmail.com>:
>>
>> > > I try to use awk to print second field from a text file
>> > > but awk prints a part of 1. field as a 2. field. Why?
>> > >
>> > > aptitude search ~i | awk '{ NF = "2" } { FIELDWIDTHS = " 4 32 " }
>> > > {print $2}' > foltelepitett_debian_csomagok
>> > >
>> > > less foltelepitett_debian_csomagok
>> > >
>> > > ..
>> > > bsdmainutils
>> > > bsdutils
>> > > busybox
>> > > A
>> > > ca-certificates
>> > > checksecurity
>>
>> A record is like these:
>>
>> i busybox - Tiny utilities for small and embedded syst
>> i A bzip2 - high-quality block-sorting file compressor
>>     |
>> 1234123456789etc.
>> 1.  |2.
>>
>> I try to get only the package name from the 2. field.
>>
>> FIELDWIDTHS = " 4 32 "
>>
>> The given width for 1. field (4) should be right, but isn't.
>> Awk give me the letter "A" as a 2. field. Why?
>>

It seem that gawk is behaving weirdly when using FIELDWIDTHS.  It splits
the input line into one less field that the number given.  

Is this a bug that should be reported?  Try this:

$ aptitude search ~i | awk 'BEGIN {FIELDWIDTHS="4 32 1"} {print $2}' | head
acpi
adduser
alsa-base
alsa-utils
amarok
amarok-engines
amarok-xine
apt
apt-build
apt-doc

-Chris




------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   Christopher Judd, Ph. D.                                           |
|   Research Scientist III                                             |
|   NYS Dept. of Health                           judd@wadsworth.org   | 
|   Wadsworth Center - ESP                                             |
|   P. O. Box 509                                    518 486-7829      |
|   Albany, NY 12201-0509                                              |
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