Read Nth column (e.g. 2nd column) of a row of data in a file that has a specific word (e.g. HOME) on that row and extract the last delimited value for the specified delimiter (e.g. /)

grep 'HOME.*' data.txt | awk '{print $2}' | awk '{FS="/"}{print $NF}' OR USE ALTERNATE WAY awk '/HOME/ {print $2}' data.txt | awk -F'/' '{print $NF}'

grep 'HOME.*' data.txt | awk '{print $2}' | awk '{FS="/"}{print $NF}' OR awk '/HOME/ {print $2}' data.txt | awk -F'/' '{print $NF}' In this example, we are having a text file that is having several entries like: --- c1 c2 c3 c4 this is some data HOME /dir1/dir2/.../dirN/somefile1.xml HOME /dir1/dir2/somefile2.xml some more data --- for lines starting with HOME, we are extracting the second field that is a 'file path with file name', and from that we need to get the filename only and ignore the slash delimited path. The output would be: somefile1.xml somefile2.xml (In case you give a -ive - pls give the reasons as well and enlighten the souls :-) )

-3

By: rommelsharma

2009-03-05 07:28:26

awk grep

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What Others Think

Another way to do it, this time with sed grep 'HOME.*' data.txt | sed -e 's/.*\/$.*$$/\1/'

OJM · 846 weeks ago

Why so complicated? awk -F',' '/HOME/ {print $NF}' data.txt

lux · 846 weeks ago

@lux: Typo: awk -F'/' '/HOME/ {print $NF}' data.txt Very nice solution BTW.

OJM · 846 weeks ago

Thanks - inputs appreciated very much and very useful to me.

rommelsharma · 846 weeks ago

If file has entries like the following, with 2nd column having the req. data: --- this is some data HOME /dir1/dir2/.../dirN/somefile1.xml some more data HOME /dir1/dir2/somefile2.xml some more data --- then awk -F'/' '/HOME/ {print $NF}' data.txt would give: somefile1.xml some more data somefile2.xml In such cases, we would need to use: awk '/HOME/ {print $2}' data.txt | awk -F'/' '{print $NF}' to get only the last delimited value from the second column.

rommelsharma · 846 weeks ago

awk is grep on steroids. As shown in comment #2, the search term can always be used in awk. awk '/search_term/' {print $1}' file rather than grep search_term file | awk '{print $1}' This reminds me of the overly-redundant cat | grep scenario: cat file | grep search_term

atoponce · 845 weeks and 5 days ago

oops, i added a misalainged quote awk '/search_term/ {print $1}' file

atoponce · 845 weeks and 5 days ago

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SOLOR · 16 weeks and 6 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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