AWK insert characters

[kiah07]

I have been trying to figure out how to insert characters with AWK. I am feeding AWK with a very large array.

awk -F " " "{print $0}"

Using the above I get something like:
cat dog bird cat dog bird cat dog bird

I would like the output to be:
..cat..dog..bird..cat..dog..bird..cat..dog..bird..

I know that I could use awk -F " " "{print ".."$0".."}"
to insert some things, but it doesn't give me periods *between* columns as well as at the beginning and end.
I have also tried the OFS option, but it doesn't seem to work!

A newb in need.... lol

[tueglee]

cat /tmp/xxx |awk '{gsub(/^/,"..");print}' |awk '{gsub(/ /,"..");print}' |awk '{gsub(/$/, "..");print}' > /tmp/xxxx

[BrianMicek]

Hi, I think sed fits your problem nicer with something like this:

[brian@bmicek ~]$ echo "cat  dog    bat" | sed 's/ /./g'
cat..dog....bat

If you want to use AWK, OFS will work but in your example you have to keep in mind that it sort of represents the "," in a print command ... this semi broken code shows what I mean:

[brian@bmicek ~]$ echo "cat  dog    bat" | awk -v 'OFS=.' '{  print $1,$2 }'
cat.dog

If you wanted, you could iterate from $1 to $NF and do something clever, but I think this is what you want:

[brian@bmicek ~]$ echo "cat  dog    bat" | awk '{  gsub( " ","." ); print }'
cat..dog....bat

One thing to know is that these examples were not done on Ubuntu. Ubuntu decided to replace gawk with another version of AWK that does not support the gawk extensions. I'm unclear if this is a gawk extension or not. If you wanted, you could install gawk (which is better frankly) on Ubuntu. Here is how you can tell:

[brian@bmicek ~]$ ls -l `which awk`
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Nov 22  2010 /usr/bin/awk -> ../../bin/gawk

[kiah07]

Thanks for the fast responses!
I found yet another alternative worked good too.
Because I was working with an array with a variable size, it was twice as difficult due to my limited understanding...

this seemed to do the trick. I used this to write a script for grep, its was good practice and now i can search a bit faster.

parsed_long_search=`echo ${search_array[*]} | awk 'BEGIN { OFS=".....\\\|....." } { $1=$1; print "...."$0"...." ; }'`

#!/bin/bash
clear
echo Kiah07 2011 

##Take multiple search strings from a user and feed them into grep to find file matches
##regardless of the text or lack thereof surrounding the specified strings. Just a plaything,
##

txt=$(tput setaf 3)
txt2=$(tput setaf 1)
trst=$(tput sgr0)

exit_timer=0
cycle=0
declare -a search_array



main() {
while [ $exit_timer == "0" ]
    do
       let "cycle +=1"
       echo "Please type a string to search for>"   
       echo -n ${txt}"Item $cycle:  ${trst}"  & read  search_array[$cycle]  
             echo 
             echo -n "Search for an additional string?  (y/n)"" "     
             read decision
             echo
                 if [ "$decision" == "n" ]; 
                   then  let "exit_timer =1"
                 fi
    done
parse
}



parse() {
parsed_long_search=`echo ${search_array[*]} | awk 'BEGIN { OFS=".....\\\|....." } { $1=$1; print "...."$0"...." ; }'`  
parsed_short_search=` echo ${search_array[*]} | awk 'BEGIN { OFS="\\\|" } { $1=$1; print ; }'`
get_directory
}



get_directory() {
echo  "What directory should be searched?  **Default is current directory"
read searchdirectory
echo "About to search for:"  $txt${search_array[*]}$trst;
confirm
}



confirm() {
echo -n "Proceed?  (y/n)"" "
 read confirm_answer 
    if [ "$confirm_answer" == "y" ];
    then search
    else newsearch
    fi
}



newsearch(){
echo -n "${txt2}**Search will not proceed**${trst}  Perform a new search?  (y/n)"" "
         read newsearch_choice
         let "exit_timer = 0"
         if [ "$newsearch_choice" == "y" ];
         then 
                 echo -n "Clear previous search terms?  (y/n)"" "
                 read clear_decision
                 if [ "$clear_decision" == "y" ];
                 then  let "cycle = 0"
                       unset search_array
                       echo "Previous search terms cleared"
                 fi
                 main          
         else exit 
         fi
}



search() {
find $searchdirectory -type f -print0 | xargs --null grep --color=always -ao "$parsed_short_search\|$parsed_long_search" ./ ; 
#find $searchdirectory -type f -print0 | xargs --null grep --color=always -ao "$first_string\|........$first_string........\|$second_string\|........$second_string........." ./ ; 
#find $searchdirectory -type f -exec grep --color=always -ao "$first_string\|........$first_string........\|$second_string\|........$second_string........" ./ {} \;
}


main

echo "Searching Completed."