[KLUG Members] Parsing a Text file

[Tony Gettig]

On Wed, 2005-07-20 at 10:42 -0400, Andrew Eidson wrote:
> Hello all.. I was wondering what is the best way to Parse a fixed length
> text file in linux.. I have a file that is 900 Characters long and needs to
> be broken out into a comma or tab delimited file so I can then import it
> into another database application. The application does not handle fixed
> length files with no delimiters... For those of you in schools you may have
> something since this is a State SRSD file that I need to Parse.. but just
> wondering what I should use. 

I work at a school district and I've used cut and perl for such
operations in the past. Not specifically SRSD, but similar datasets.
Perl has been the most flexible for me, but I think it is worth seeing
whether cut will do the job for you. I didn't have time to master awk,
but it may very well work too. All three tools are readily available in
most standard distro installs.

Good luck!