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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-06T06:59:57+00:00

The following awk statement is working as expected. It returns 1st, 2nd and last

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The following awk statement is working as expected.
It returns 1st, 2nd and last 4 columns from a text file delimited by |

awk '{print $1,"|", $2,"|", $(NF-3), "|",$(NF-2), "|", $(NF-1),"|", $(NF)}'

I will like to return the middle columns in between. In other words I need to replace the $something from the following line to something that will work.

awk '{print $1, $2, $something, $(NF-3), $(NF-2) $(NF-1), $(NF)}'

There can be 3 to 11 columns those will replace the something variable.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think I have understood what you are expecting your output to look like. Try this line of awk:

    awk 'BEGIN { OFS="|" } { for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) if (i <= 3 || i >= NF - 3) printf "%s"OFS, $i; else printf "%s", $i; print "" }' file.txt

    Test input:

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9 X10 X11 X12 X13 X14
Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7 Y8 Y9 Y10 Y11 Y12 Y13 Y14
101 102 103 104 1010 1011 1012 1013 1014

    Test output:

    1|2|3|4567891011|12|13|14
X1|X2|X3|X4X5X6X7X8X9X10X11|X12|X13|X14
Y1|Y2|Y3|Y4Y5Y6Y7Y8Y9Y10Y11|Y12|Y13|Y14
101|102|103|10410101011|1012|1013|1014

    HTH

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