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From: oscarh@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Oscar Herrera)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: line length limit in awk
Message-ID: <8720005@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com>
Date: 10 Oct 90 14:33:18 GMT
References: <jwright.655206740@catfish>
Organization: Hewlett Packard - Boise, ID
Lines: 24

|Is the limitation of number of fields per record in (n)awk insurmountable?
|My data files consist of a julian date in "%13.5f " format followed
|by 100 data readings in " %8.2f" format, followed by a newline.  Pretty
|tame stuff, but awk, nawk and vi all claim the lines are too long to
|deal with.  Other tools have varying success.  Am I screwed or is
|there and easy way to fix awk?  (Without a source license.)

	I've run into similar problems in the past but have 
	been able to 'work around' the limitations by combinations
	of the fold command and by redefining the record separator
	awk uses.  Of course it is always easier if the data a files
	are preformatted by whatever process produces it with the 
	post processing by awk in mind.  Here is an example of a
	reformatted record.  In the BEGIN part of your awk script you
	would redefine the record separator to #

	1234567890123.12345
	12345678.12
	.            
	.
	.
	12345678.12
	12345678.12
	#