From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jan 5 19:28:56 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 910CC16A4CE for ; Mon, 5 Jan 2004 19:28:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from madras.dyndns.org (dsl-137.241.240.220.dsl.comindico.com.au [220.240.241.137]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D1D2343D4C for ; Mon, 5 Jan 2004 19:28:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ggop@madras.dyndns.org) Received: from madras.dyndns.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by madras.dyndns.org (8.12.9p1/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i063RS7v008697; Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:27:30 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from ggop@madras.dyndns.org) Received: (from ggop@localhost) by madras.dyndns.org (8.12.9p1/8.12.9/Submit) id i063RPIm008692; Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:27:25 +1100 (EST) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:27:24 +1100 From: Gautam Gopalakrishnan To: Malcolm Kay Message-ID: <20040106032724.GA8616@madras.dyndns.org> References: <200401061230.42038.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> <20040106022052.GA8122@madras.dyndns.org> <200401061345.04575.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200401061345.04575.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i cc: Zhang Weiwu cc: questions@freebsd.org cc: zhangweiwu@realss.com Subject: Re: help me with this sed expression X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 03:28:56 -0000 On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 01:45:04PM +1030, Malcolm Kay wrote: > On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 12:50, Gautam Gopalakrishnan wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 12:30:42PM +1030, Malcolm Kay wrote: > > > On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 22:19, Zhang Weiwu wrote: > > > > Hello. I've worked an hour to figure out a serial of sed command to > > > > process some text (without any luck, you kown I'm kinda newbie). I > > > > really appreciate your help. > > > > > > > > The original text file is in this form -- for each line: > > > > one Chinese word then one or two English word seperated by space. > > > > > > > > I tried to do things like s/\(.*\)\([a-z]*\)/\2 \1/ but the first > > > > \(.*\) is too greedy and included the rest [a-z]. > > > > > > Well the greedy part is easily fixed with: > > > s/\([^a-z]*\)\([a-z]*\)/\2 \1/ > > > > > > But this will not work for those lines with 2 english words. The > > > following should: % sed -n -e 's/\([^a-z]*\)\([a-z]*\) .*/\2 \1/p' -e > > > 's/\([^a-z]*\)[a-z]* \([a-z]*\)/\2 \1/p' original > target > > > > I think awk is easier: > > > > awk '{print $2 " " $3 " " $1}' original | tr -s > target > > I'm not really very familiar with awk, but I must say this > is a much simpler and rather magical solution. > > How does awk know which part of the original line goes into $1, $2 and $3. > (You will notice there is no space between the chinese and english words). > It does not. I did not read the earlier mail properly. But there is an easier way than all those regexes: Prefix the first a-z char with a space and use awk. sed -e 's/\([a-z]\)/ \1/' | awk '{print $2" "$1} NF==3 {print $3" "$1}' Gautam