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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Datafile conversion with AWK !
Keywords: datafile conversion awk sed
Message-ID: <6599@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 14 Dec 89 22:56:35 GMT
References: <539@csoftec.csf.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 49

In article <539@csoftec.csf.com> root@csoftec.csf.com (Cliff Manis (cmanis@csoftec)) writes:
: I am needing help with data conversion, and would appreciate help 
: in AWK or SED and/or awk & sed.   Or whatever....

Here is, of course, the answer in "whatever":        :-)

#!/usr/bin/perl

@key = ('','','');
while (<>) {
    ($key,$addr,$rest,$sub) = /^([^|]*\|[^|]*\|[^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|(.*(\d))/;
    &printone if $key ne $lastkey;
    $addr[$sub-1] = $addr;
}
&printone;

sub printone {
    print join('|',$lastkey,@addr,$lastrest),"\n" if $lastkey ne '';
    $lastkey = $key;
    $lastrest = $rest;
    @addr = ('','','','');
}

I think you should find this fairly readable.

If you're uncomfortable with the hairy regular expression, here's one
that uses split instead:

#!/usr/bin/perl

@key = ('','','');
while (<>) {
    (@key[0..2],$addr,@remainder) = split(/[|]/,$_,14);
    $sub = pop(@remainder);
    $key = join('|',@key);
    &printone if $key ne $lastkey;
    $addr[$sub-1] = $addr;
}
&printone;

sub printone {
    print join('|',$lastkey,@addr,@lastremainder,"1\n") if $lastkey ne '';
    $lastkey = $key;
    @lastremainder = @remainder;
    @addr = ('','','','');
}

Larry Wall
lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov