Re: [9fans] awk help; not plan9 matter

[Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com>]

2009/9/17 yy <yiyu.jgl@gmail.com>:
> if you want to preserve white-space, you better forget about fields
> and work with indexes on the string, match is your friend:
>
> % echo '1      3 4           8' | awk '{match($0, /[ \t]*[^ \t]+[
> \t]+/);a=RLENGTH+1;match(substr($0, a), /[ \t]/);print
> substr($0,0,a-1) "hell" substr($0,RSTART+a)}'
> 1      hell 4           8

Well, it's just so difficult for me to read this. :)
Also, i don't see how to easily modify it to flexibly work for any
(not known beforehand) column, as I need.
Why do you think this is better than my final solution?

> this is indeed a bit OT here, maybe next time you prefer trying in
> #awk at freenode, where this kind of problems are welcomed

I didn't know there is a separate channel for awk...

Thanks
Ruda