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From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: awk scripts, examples of
Keywords: awk scripts examples
Message-ID: <1990Dec27.154218.3491@ms.uky.edu>
Date: 27 Dec 90 15:42:18 GMT
References: <1543@manta.NOSC.MIL>
Organization: The Puzzle Palace, UKentucky
Lines: 55

In article <1543@manta.NOSC.MIL> plantz@manta.NOSC.MIL (Glen W. Plantz) writes:
>
>I need to use awk to scan a file that consists of lines, each line starting 
>with an integer, followed by a line of text that should have a period and then
>a newline character following that. The script should save the number at the
>beginning of the line, and if the line does not have a "period" prior to the 
>"newline", to print out a message, with the integer number that was at the
>beginning of the line.
>

Well, here's a quick solution to your problem.  This has been tested on
an AT&T 3B2/1000 running SVR3.2.2.......

Given this text file "testtext":

1 this is a test of this function.
2 i think this is an editing application.
3 it might work in any text processor, though
999 a troff-like system could also use this stuff.

and this script:

#!/bin/sh
# 
# hack out and validate lines preceded by integers.

awk '{ linenum = $1;
       if (index($NF,".") == 0) {
          printf("Error in line %d; no period\n",linenum);
       } else {
          print;
       }
      }' testtext

You get this output:

1 this is a test of this function.
2 i think this is an editing application.
Error in line 3; no period
999 a troff-like system could also use this stuff.

If you need some more help, feel free to get in touch.  I don't claim 
that this is an elegant solution, but it's the old "top-of-the-head"
solution.....

O'Reilly and Associates have just published "sed & awk", the newest
of their Nutshell handbooks.  It's easy to read, and includes many
working scripts, 10 of which were submitted by Usenet readers.


-- 
    | Wes Morgan, not speaking for | {any major site}!ukma!ukecc!morgan | 
    | the University of Kentucky's |        morgan@engr.uky.edu         |
    | Engineering Computing Center |   morgan%engr.uky.edu@UKCC.BITNET  | 
     Lint is the compiler's only means of dampening the programmer's ego.