[lug] awk question

[John E. Koontz]

At 08:55 AM 1/28/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>Thanks!  I think I'll still try the exercise in pain that John Koontz
>suggested since I'd ultimately like to automate this... But your
>recommendation will help me get the initial meat-n-potatoes out today.

A little more painful than I recalled, the main pains being:

1) Can't regroup in field variables, because fields are reparsed (actually 
a useful thing ...).
      So, you put the fixed up fields in an array.
2) But, once you put it in an array, the lack of a looping structure for 
use in prints requires
     a loop to reassemble things.
3) I never have been able to grasp the workings of OFS, the output field 
separator.

BEGIN { FS = ","
         myfs = "|"
       }
       { print "On input  " NF " fields:  " $0 }

       { j = 1
         f[j] = $1
         for (i = 2; i <= NF; i++) {
           if (f[j] ~ /^".*[^"]$/) {
             f[j] = f[j] FS $i
           } else {
             j++
             f[j] = $i
           }
#         print "j = " j " i = " i " f[j] = " f[j]
         }
       }
       { record = f[1]
         for (i = 2; i <= j; i++) {
           record = record myfs f[i]
         }
       }
       { print "On output " j " fields:  " record }

John E. Koontz
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