Question

I have a file like this:

Name Position Letter String
Bla 123 A ..B.,,,.C..
Bla 123 B ..a.,,,.C..
Bla 123 C ..b.,,,.A..

I would like to replace the . and , with Letter (in the first line it’s A)

The end product:

Name Position Letter String
Bla 123 A AABAAAAACAA
Bla 123 B BBaBBBBBCBB
Bla 123 C CCbCCCCCACC

The awk thinking is replace character in column 4 with “the” character in column 3.
I think awk should be the correct tool for this but I´m stuck with replacing character in string.

sed s/\(^.\{4\}\)./\\{3\}/ didn’t work and I think sed may be the wrong tool.

Awk/sed/python/perl/vi solutions welcomed.

Answer 1

perl -pale '$F[3]=~s/[.,]/$F[2]/g;$_=join" ",@F' file

See it