Check field length using awk

awk field
bernie picture bernie · Jan 10, 2011 · Viewed 91.4k times · Source

I have a file of 3 fields:

123710337783,351898014413150,123028040249634
123710337785,352934028758390,123028040109275

I need to check that the fields meet the following lengths:

Field 1 = 12
Field 2 = 15 or 16
Field 3 = 15

I get an error when running this:

awk -F, '{if(length($2) == 15 ) || length($2) == 16) && length($1) == 12 && length($3)) == 15) print  }'

Please assist.

Bernie

Answer

Chris J picture Chris J · Jan 10, 2011

All your brackets are mismatched. An 'if' expression must be contained within brackets, i.e.,

if (X == 45) ...
if ((X == 45) || (Y == 23)) ...

you don't have this, and you've got more closing brackets than opening brackets - so the balance is off as well; if we count the brackets (increment for open, decrement for close), we end up with a total of -3 instead of 0, so closing three more brackets than we have open:

            1      2  1       0          1  0     -1          0 -1                0 -1 -2     -3
awk -F, '{if(length($2) == 15 ) || length($2) == 16) && length($1) == 12 && length($3)  ) == 15) print  }'

So, try this instead which rebalances everything:

awk -F, '{ if (((length($2) == 15 ) || length($2) == 16) && (length($1) == 12 && length($3) == 15)) print }'

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