Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE Hello,
cut needs something and this email is about that. users of cut -c17-18,20-22,28-33 need output to come out with tabs as abc def ghi or spaces abc def ghi or user defined -d: abc:def:ghi not abcdefghi as it does now with the fields *pasted* together. That's the reqeust. A long explanation follows about why other attempted alternatives are insufficient to cover what is being requested here. Thanks, Jason I can't use cut -f with delimiter because field separation is inconsistent, sometimes nonexistent. Example: 0200(ECKD) at ( 94: 0) is dasda : active at blocksize: 4096, 600840 blocks, 2347 MB 129e(ECKD) at ( 94:100) is dasdz : active at blocksize: 4096, 601020 blocks, 2347 MB I want "94" as field one, "0" and "100" as field two, and "dasda" and "dasdz" as field three. There are two colons that give me the following when I use awk so awk is no option. : cat /proc/dasd/devices | awk -F: '{ print $1":" $2 }' 129d(ECKD) at ( 94: 96) is dasdy 129e(ECKD) at ( 94:100) is dasdz The output colon is provided by me. when I use spaces as delimiter it looks even worse. awk $4 94: 94: 94:100) 94:104) there is a space after 94: creating a delimited situation that doesn't exist when the number after 94 reaches 100 and above taking away that space and making the second field indistinguishable from the first. awk $4 $5 94:92) 94:96) 94:100)is 94:104)is This way I could strip off )is but still want to capture dasda that comes later. Added headache. The cleanest way to get the fields is with cut since I can count on columnar consistency. cat /proc/dasd/devices | cut -c17-18,20-22,28-33 94 92dasdx 94 96dasdy 94100dasdz 94104dasdaa 94108dasdab Isn't it a bug to have the -c list come out not separated by something? It would be different if I had one range but some folks have several comma-separated ranges who don't want them "paste"d together. see man paste I can tr out the spaces. The problem is how to get the output separated by delimiters of my choice. I'd like to see: 94: 92:dasdx 94: 96:dasdy 94:100:dasdz 94:104:dasdaa 94:108:dasdab But cut will not allow me to output delimiter unless I'm using -f which I showed earlier won't work for me. If cut -f would work so would awk. Neither do. Hence my request. Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE _______________________________________________ Bug-textutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-textutils