Basic usage

Use the FIELDWIDTHS = "n1 n2 n3 ..." annotation in the BEGIN section of an awk command to specify the widths of the fields.

For instance, the following file has widths of 20, 10, and 12 characters.

NAME STATE TELEPHONE

John Smith WA 418-311-4111

Mary Hartford CA 319-219-4341

Evan Nolan IL 219-532-5301

Boris Ratinski NC 201-553-5555

Below is an example of processing such a file:

BEGIN { FIELDWIDTHS = "20 10 12" }

NR > 1 {

name = $1

state = $2

phone = $3

sub(/ +$/, "", name)

sub(/ +$/, "", state)

sub(/ +$/, "", phone)

printf("%s lives in %s. The phone number is %s.n", name, state, phone)

}

Then you can run the command:

awk -f process_fixed_width.awk fixed_width.txt