Question

I am trying to selectively display several columns from a db table(see sample below) using awk. While not all the fields are populated, I still need to return a blank field to represent it.

--------- -------------------------- ------------ ------
000       0000000000198012           702          29
000       0000000000198013                        29
000                                  702          29
000       0000000000198015           702          03
055       0000000000000001           702          

This is what I’m using:

select * from db| awk '{print $1,$3,$4}'

but in the rows where there is a blank field, awk is skipping over those fields and displaying the result from the next populated field. How do I display the results accurately?

-Thanks!

Answer 1

If the columns have a consistent/static width, and the spacing is handled with ‘ ‘ characters, not tabs (meaning every line is the same length, regardless of missing fields), you could use cut with an appropriate list of field start/stop positions.