Question

I am new to AWK.
Can you please let me know how to read a line from file using awk? How can I get a value using substring function from read line and store it into a variable? For example here is the data set:

01 001   410070300186169                 359829047319420
01 002   410070234186169                 359829043245420
01 001   410070234186169                 359829047319420

I want to check if at position 4 to 6 , value is “001” then write the data in file file_1 and if the value is “002” then write the data in file file_2.

Answer 1

Here you go; you can put this all on one line, but I’ve broken it down into multiple for readability:

awk '$2=="001" {print > "file_1"}
     $2=="002" {print > "file_2"}' input_file

Explanation:

• awk separates each line into fields using spaces and tabs as delimiters by default, so for each line read, values in your 2nd column will be saved in $2
• $2=="001" {print > "file_1"}: if $2 is 001, print the entire line into file_1
• $2=="002" {print > "file_2"}: likewise for 002