Question

So, currently i have created a code to do this as shown below. This code works and does what it is supposed to do after I echo the variables:

a=`awk 'NR==2 {print $1}' $coor`

b=`awk 'NR==3 {print $2}' $coor`

c=`awK 'NR==4 {print $3}' $coor`

….but i have to do this for many more lines and i want a more general expression. So I have attempted to create a loop shown below. Syntax wise i don’t think anything is wrong with the code, but it is not outputting anything to the file “Cmain”.

I was wondering if anyone could help me, I’m kinda new at scripting.

If it helps any, I can also post what i am trying to read.

for (( i=1; i <= 4 ; i++ )); do
  for (( j=0; j <= 3 ; j++ )); do
    B="`grep -n "cell" "$coor" | awk 'NR=="$i" {print $j}'`"
  done
done

echo "$B" >> Cmain

Answer 1

You can replace your lines of awk with this one:

awk '{ for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) if (NR >= 2 && NR == i) print $(i - 1) }' file.txt

Tested input:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Output:

11
22
33
44
55
66
77