Question

Why do I get the white space before and after the delimiter in the following example?

awk -F'^'  '{print $1,":",$2}' SERVER_2012-02-29-12-15-00
3969 : 1272
3969 : 1272
3969 : 1272

I expect the results as below without any space:

3969:1272
3969:1272
3969:1272

The text file looks like this…

cat SERVER_2012-02-29-12-15-00
3969^1272^14.140.90.242^^IN^como^2012-02-29
3969^1272^14.140.90.242^^IN^como^2012-02-29
3969^1272^14.140.90.242^^IN^como^2012-02-29

Answer 1

This might work for you:

awk -F'^'  '{print $1":"$2}' SERVER_2012-02-29-12-15-00
3969:1272
3969:1272
3969:1272

To concatenate the fields with a : remove the ,‘s.

Or change the output field separator OFS to null.

awk -F'^' -vOFS='' '{print $1",:,"$2}' SERVER_2012-02-29-12-15-00
3969:1272
3969:1272
3969:1272