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From: mario@wjvax.UUCP (Mario Dona)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Is AWK up to this application?
Keywords: awk
Message-ID: <1661@wjvax.UUCP>
Date: 5 Oct 90 00:31:21 GMT
Organization: Watkins-Johnson Co., San Jose
Lines: 37


Does anyone know of a way of extracting information from a text file
which contains variable length fields, and outputting it in a different
format?  For example, I have a text file which contains names and
addresses as shown below.

John Doe           1563 Meadow Lane         San Jose, CA 94325 more stuff --->
John Smith         345 N. First Street      Oakland, CA 94356  more stuff --->
Henry & Martha Coe 4567 Poplar Ave.         Newark, NJ 78389   more stuff--->

^                  ^                        ^
|                  |                        |
|                  |                        |_____  column 45
|                  |______________________________  column 20
|_________________________________________________  column 1

I want to extract the names and addresses and output it in the following
format:

John Doe
1563 Meadow Lane
San Jose, CA 94325

John Smith
245 N. First Street
Oakland, CA 94356

Henry & Martha Coe
4567 Poplar Ave.
Newark, NJ 7838

Can this be done using AWK, and if so how? Or is there some other way?


  Mario Dona
  ...!{ !decwrl!qubix, ames!oliveb!tymix, pyramid}!wjvax!mario         
  The above opinions are mine alone and not, in any way, those of WJ.