Columns - the end

[jnm at safn2.saf.com (James N McClatchey)]

Thanks to all who answered. It is interesting to me how often strings
and string manipulation are the subject of problems and questions in
the C-Unix environment. 

To summarize:

Problem: convert "every | good | boy | does | fine" to

every
good
boy
does
fine

Answers: Consensus seemed to be to use sed to strip whitespace.
Then to add newlines:

1 ) gawk

awk -F\| '{for (i=0;i<=NF;i++) {printf "%s\n,$i}}'

2) tr

tr '|' '\012'

3) fmt

sed 's/|//g' | fmt -1

I guess I liked #2 myself. #1 seemed a little obtuse. #3 might cause
problems with fields that contained whitespace in their midst.
Thanks again!

Regards - Jim
-- 
James N. McClatchey P.E. (Southern Aluminum Finishing Co, Atlanta, GA, USA)
Architectural Aluminum. Custom Fabrication. Paint, Powder Coating, Anodizing
mailto:jnm at saf.com Voice: 404-355-1560 Fax: 404-350-0581
http://www.saf.com   SAF Home Page