Re: help

[Dave B]

francesco viscomi wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm not an expert with awk (and gawk ) but i should want to be.
> 
> I use this command:
> awk -F; '{ print $1 }' CDI.txt
> 
> where the CDI.txt file is a test file where each field is separated by a ;
> And it do not work!!!!!

This is the worst possible description of your problem (if that can
considered a description at all). However, in this case, there is a suspect
(see below).

> If I change the separator field from ; to : it works well

I don't think so, since you say that the fields are separated by ";", not
":". Using ":" is probably not giving an error message, but does not do what
you want.

> I use a windows machine (unfortunately!!!) on wich i have istalled Cygwin
> and use gawk from there.

";" is special to the shell, so you have to protect it, either with -F ';'
or -F \;

-- 
D.