1

I'm looking to conditionally select two columns from the third line of a file based on the first column of the first line of the file.

Here is the file format:

v1
shortdesc
value1 value2 value3 value4 ...

Using this example, I'd want value2 and value3 if v1, otherwise, I'd like value1 and value4.

I know how to get the line and column using something like awk 'FNR ==1 {print $1} but how do I use the if clause?

The code that is not working for me looks something like this:

awk '{if("NR == 1 $1"=="v1") {FNR==3 print $2 "\t" $3;} else {FNR==3 print $1 "\t" $4;}}'
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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

You can try this one:

awk 'NR == 1 { if ($1 == "v1") { p = 1; } } NR == 3 { if (p) { print $2 "\t" $3; } else { print $1 "\t" $4; } }' file
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3
  • awk 'NR==1{a=$1}NR==3{if(a=="v1")print $2,$3;else print $1,$4;exit}' OFS='\t' file Commented May 20, 2015 at 20:18
  • @Costas post it as answer. Commented May 20, 2015 at 20:22
  • 1
    it is just variant of yours with some extra {} removed Commented May 20, 2015 at 20:23
1

Just for fun:
sed

sed -n '1h
        3{
            x
            G
            s/v1\n\S* \(\S* \S*\).*/\1/p
            t
            s/.*\n\(\S*\) \S* \S*\( \S*\).*/\1\2/p
          }
         4Q' file

test, head, tail, cut 

[ $(head -1 file) == 'v1' ] &&
    field='2,3' ||
    field='1,4'
head -5 file | tail -1 | cut -d" " -f"$field"

bash

{ read v1
  read
  read a b c d e
  } <file
[ "$v1" == 'v1' ] && echo $b $c || echo $a $d
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