I have many data files needing to be parsed and reformatted. The parsing is easy using the print statement, but I'm struggling to find an awk string manipulation function that reformats each field. Reading "Effective awk Programming, 4th Ed." leaves me uncertain whether to use sub(), gsub(), gensub() or something else.
A trio of parsed lines look like this: 19881001 003000 0.75 19881001 010000 0.75 19881001 013000 0.75 What I want for output is this: 1988-10-01 00:30 0.75 1988-10-01 01:00 0.75 1988-10-01 01:30 0.75 The first field is a date, the second a time in hours and minutes (seconds are always zero), the third is the value associated with that date and time. The split() function, as I understand it, will split the line and assign each field to an array. That's not what I want. The sub() family will substitute characters based on regex and string position; I don't want this either. I think that what I need is grouping each field by the number of digits, then back referencing each group and separating with the appropriate character (- or :) and my attempts to do this have failed. Pointers to resources that will teach me what I need to learn are needed. TIA, Rich _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
