Changing a string of blanks to a string of 0s in a specific column range in a data file.

rjsosi

Hi,

We're using Redhat Linux 7.9 with bsh.

I want to go through a data file and replace all the fields between columns 10 and 20 that have blanks with 0s.

So if I have an example file of:

"#######################

#######################

#######################

#########      ######

#######################

#######################

#######################

#######################"

I want the script to make it look like :

"#######################

#######################

#######################

#########000000000######

#######################

#######################"

#######################

#######################"

I've tried usign the followig:

awk '{val=substr($0,10,19);gsub(val,"     ","000000000")}1' scr1

But it only returns the original file. What did I miss?

Thanks!

User51642 Yong Huang

awk -vOFS=$'\0' '{bf=substr($0,1,9);val=substr($0,10,19);print bf,gensub(" ","0","g",val)}' scr1

Note: val should be the last argument to *sub functions (i.e. gsub, sub, gensub), not the first. Also, I don't think you can do in-place edit. So I save the preceding substring to bf and print bf followed by the return value of gensub (if you used gsub, the return value would be number of replacements). And I set the output field separator to null with OFS (syntax -vOFS='' or -vOFS=$"\0" works for me too).