• The UNIX philosophy is driven by a core set of UNIX text processing utilities that work together to process streams of text.
  • See the programs in the “Text utilities” category in the GNU project's core Unix utilities list.
  • These text processing utilities are line-based, meaning they process text streams one line at a time.
    • Text streams are read from files on disk, redirected from files on disk using < file or are read through standard input.
• The Advanced Bash Scripting Guide also has a section on text processing utilities that includes usage examples.

Run the following command to begin setting up a subdirectory structure for the text processing utility examples:

for topic in grep sed sort uniq awk tr; do echo mkdir -p ~/cs370/examples/text/$topic; done # | bash

Remove the end comment # to pipe (|) the mkdir commands to bash.

Note: The above directories could have been created without a for loop, using shell brace expansion:

mkdir -p ~/cs370/examples/text/{sed,sort,uniq,awk,tr}

• print lines matching a pattern in a file or stdin

• SYNOPSIS (also see the manual page for grep)

     grep [options] PATTERN [FILE...]
     grep [options] [-e PATTERN | -f FILE] [FILE...]

• grep handles normal regular expressions (see Regular Expressions)
• egrep (extended grep) supposed to handle extended regular expressions, e.g. +, ?
• fgrep (fast grep) only searches for fixed strings

$ cat grepfile        # see grepfile contents

Well you know it's your bedtime,
So turn off the light,
Say all your prayers and then,
Oh you sleepy young heads dream of wonderful things,
Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,
And you will be swimming there too.


$ grep the grepfile     # look for pattern "the" in grepfile

So turn off the light,
Say all your prayers and then,
Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,
And you will be swimming there too.


$ cat grepfile | grep the       # pipe grepfile to grep

So turn off the light,
Say all your prayers and then,
Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,
And you will be swimming there too.


# look for whole word "the" in grepfile and number lines found
$ grep -wn the grepfile

2:So turn off the light,
5:Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,


# look for lines without "the", number lines
$ grep -wnv the grepfile

1:Well you know it's your bedtime,
3:Say all your prayers and then,
4:Oh you sleepy young heads dream of wonderful things,
6:And you will be swimming there too.

$ grep .nd grepfile

Say all your prayers and then,
Oh you sleepy young heads dream of wonderful things,
And you will be swimming there too.


$ grep ^.nd grepfile

And you will be swimming there too.


$ grep sw.*ng grepfile

And you will be swimming there too.


$ grep [A-D] grepfile 

Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,
And you will be swimming there too.


$ grep "\." grepfile

And you will be swimming there too.


$ grep a. grepfile  

Say all your prayers and then,
Oh you sleepy young heads dream of wonderful things,
Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,


$ grep a.$ grepfile

Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,


$ grep [a-m]nd grepfile

Say all your prayers and then,


$ grep [^a-m]nd grepfile

Oh you sleepy young heads dream of wonderful things,
And you will be swimming there too.


$ egrep s.+w grepfile

Oh you sleepy young heads dream of wonderful things,
Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,


$ egrep "off|will" grepfile

So turn off the light,
Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,
And you will be swimming there too.


$ egrep im*ing grepfile    

And you will be swimming there too.


$ egrep im?ing grepfile
? Why no matches ?

• By default, grep returns lines that match a given pattern.
  • But, sometimes you want to see the context around the matching lines.
  • grep context options are -C (context), -A (after context), -B (before context)

# -C 1 option below means grep will show 1 line above and
# and 1 line below the matching lines:
$ grep -C 1 sleepy grepfile

Say all your prayers and then,
Oh you sleepy young heads dream of wonderful things,
Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea, 


# -A 2 option means show up to 2 lines AFTER the matching lines:
$ grep -A 2 sleepy grepfile

Oh you sleepy young heads dream of wonderful things,
Beautiful mermaids will swim through the sea,
And you will be swimming there too.


# -B 2 option means show up to 2 lines BEFORE the matching lines:
$ grep -B 2 sleepy grepfile

So turn off the light,
Say all your prayers and then,
Oh you sleepy young heads dream of wonderful things,

• Scans one or more files or stdin and performs an editing action on all lines that match a particular condition.
• Useful for simple repetitive editing tasks.

• SYNOPSIS

     sed [ -e command ] [ -f scriptfile ] { fileName }

• a\ - Append text
• c\ - Change text
• d - Delete text
• i\ - Insert text
• r - Insert file
• s/regexpr/str/ - Substitute 1st occurrence of regexpr by str
• s/regexpr/str/g - Substitute every occurrence of regexpr by str

# The sed input file:
$ cat fiction

The lone monarch butterfly flew flutteringly through
the cemetery, dancing on and glancing against headstone
after headstone before alighting atop Willie Mitchell's
already lowered casket, causing gasps of awe to fly
from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners,
until a big shovelful of dirt landed on it and it died.


$ sed 's/^/ /' fiction > fiction.indented

# contents of 'fiction' indented by one space:
$ cat fiction.indented

The lone monarch butterfly flew flutteringly through
the cemetery, dancing on and glancing against headstone
after headstone before alighting atop Willie Mitchell's
already lowered casket, causing gasps of awe to fly
from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners,
until a big shovelful of dirt landed on it and it died.


$ sed 's/^ *//' fiction.indented     # removes leading spaces


# To insert the indentations directly into 'fiction' means
# doing an "in-place" edit of 'fiction', using sed's '-i' option:
$ sed -i 's/^/ /' fiction

$ sed '/a/d' fiction      # remove all lines containing char 'a'.

from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners,


$ sed '/\<a\>/d' fiction  # remove lines containing the word 'a'.

The lone monarch butterfly flew flutteringly through
the cemetery, dancing on and glancing against headstone
after headstone before alighting atop Willie Mitchell's
already lowered casket, causing gasps of awe to fly
from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners,

# Sed accepts sed scripts with the '-f' option;
# sed5 is a sed script containing sed commands;
# It will insert 2 lines at line 1:
$ cat sed5

1i\
Copyright 2002 Joe Chung\
All rights reserved\

$ sed -f sed5 fiction

Copyright 2002 Joe Chung
All rights reserved

The lone monarch butterfly flew flutteringly through
the cemetery, dancing on and glancing against headstone
after headstone before alighting atop Willie Mitchell's
already lowered casket, causing gasps of awe to fly
from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners,
until a big shovelful of dirt landed on it and it died.

• For simpler sed text insertions based on a pattern search, can use the following:

Append text after a line that contains pattern with
   sed '/pattern/a line of text here' filename

Insert text before a line that contains pattern with
   sed '/pattern/i line of text here' filename

Examples of appending and inserting a line of text:

$ cat test
foo
bar
option
baz

$ sed '/option/a append text here' test
foo
bar
option
append text here
baz

$ sed '/option/i insert text here' test
foo
bar
insert text here
option
baz

# Another sed script, containing a sed change text directive:
$ cat sed6

1,3c\
Lines 1-3 are censored.\

$ sed -f sed6 fiction

Lines 1-3 are censored.
already lowered casket, causing gasps of awe to fly
from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners,
until a big shovelful of dirt landed on it and it died.


# Another sed script, containing a sed change text directive:
$ cat sed7

1c\
Line 1 is censored.
2c\
Line 2 is obfuscated.
3c\
Line 3 is kaput.


$ sed -f sed7 fiction

Line 1 is censored.
Line 2 is obfuscated.
Line 3 is kaput.
already lowered casket, causing gasps of awe to fly
from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners,
until a big shovelful of dirt landed on it and it died.

# We want to insert a file called 'fin' using sed:
$ cat fin

The End

# Direct sed to insert 'fin' at end of 'fiction'
$ sed '$r fin' fiction

The lone monarch butterfly flew flutteringly through
the cemetery, dancing on and glancing against headstone
after headstone before alighting atop Willie Mitchell's
already lowered casket, causing gasps of awe to fly
from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners,
until a big shovelful of dirt landed on it and it died.
The End

# Use sed's '-e' option to perform multiple sed operations
# per line:
$ sed -e 's/^/<< /' -e 's/$/ >>/' fiction

<< The lone monarch butterfly flew flutteringly through >>
<< the cemetery, dancing on and glancing against headstone >>
<< after headstone before alighting atop Willie Mitchell's >>
<< already lowered casket, causing gasps of awe to fly >>
<< from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners, >>
<< until a big shovelful of dirt landed on it and it died. >>

• SYNOPSIS

     sort [OPTION]... [FILE]...

• Does ascending, lexicographic (alphabetical) sort by default.
• Entire lines are seen as the sort key by default, but can specify with fields to use as sort keys in delimited text.

# Sort input file:
$ cat sortfile

jan  Start  chapter 3  10th
Jan  Start  chapter 1  30th
Jan  Start chapter 5  23rd
Jan  End  chapter 3  23rd
Mar  Start chapter 7  27
may  End  chapter 7  17th
Apr  End  Chapter 5  1
Feb  End chapter 5  14



$ sort sortfile         

Apr  End Chapter 5  1
Feb  End chapter 5  14
Jan  End chapter 3  23rd
Jan  Start chapter 1  30th
jan  Start chapter 3  10th
Jan  Start chapter 5  23rd
Mar  Start chapter 7  27
may  End chapter 7  17th



# Force reverse or descending sort:
$ sort -r sortfile      

may  End chapter 7  17th
Mar  Start chapter 7  27
Jan  Start chapter 5  23rd
jan  Start chapter 3  10th
Jan  Start chapter 1  30th
Jan  End chapter 3  23rd
Feb  End chapter 5  14
Apr  End Chapter 5  1



# Sort starting in the 1st (+0) field, end at the 2nd (-1) field;
# alternatively: sort --key=1,1 sortfile:
$ sort +0 -1 sortfile

Apr  End Chapter 5  1
Feb  End chapter 5  14
jan  Start chapter 3  10th
Jan  End chapter 3  23rd
Jan  Start chapter 1  30th
Jan  Start chapter 5  23rd
Mar  Start chapter 7  27
may  End chapter 7  17th




# Sort by month name in 1st field
$ sort +0 -1 -M sortfile

Jan  End chapter 3  23rd
Jan  Start chapter 1  30th
jan  Start chapter 3  10th
Jan  Start chapter 5  23rd
Feb  End chapter 5  14
Mar  Start chapter 7  27
Apr  End Chapter 5  1
may  End chapter 7  17th




# sort by the 5th (last) field numerically;
# alternatively:  sort --key=5 -n sortfile
$ sort +4 -5 -n sortfile

Apr  End Chapter 5  1
jan  Start chapter 3  10th
Feb  End chapter 5  14
may  End chapter 7  17th
Jan  End chapter 3  23rd
Jan  Start chapter 5  23rd
Mar  Start chapter 7  27
Jan  Start chapter 1  30th

• SYNOPSIS

     uniq [OPTION]... [INPUT [OUTPUT]]

• Requires input to be sorted
  • So, usually used in conjunction with sort

# Input file for uniq:
$ cat animals

cat snake
monkey snake
dolphin elephant
dolphin elephant
goat elephant
pig pig
pig pig
monkey pig


# Default mode filters out non-unique lines:
$ uniq animals

cat snake
monkey snake
dolphin elephant
goat elephant
pig pig
monkey pig


# count instances of nonunique lines
$ uniq -c animals

  1 cat snake
  1 monkey snake
  2 dolphin elephant
  1 goat elephant
  2 pig pig
  1 monkey pig


# Ignore first field of each line when
# looking for duplicates:
$ uniq -1 animals

cat snake
dolphin elephant
pig pig

• Awk is a specialized programming language.
• awk programs
  • can be supplied on command line surrounded by single quotes. For example,

     $ awk -F "." '{ print "mkdir " $2 }'

• can be placed in a text file specified using the “-f” option. For example,

     $ awk -F "." -f makedirs

     where makedirs contains

        { print "mkdir " $2 }

• awk programs act on individual lines in a file or standard input and have the general form:

   Synopsis:
   
       awk [ condition ] [ { action } ]

       condition can be:

          - special token BEG[awk - pattern scanning and processing language] IN or END
          - expression using logical or relational operators and/or regular expression

       action is performed on every line of input that matches the
       condition and can be one or more C-like programming statements:

          - if (conditional) statement [ else statement ]
          - while (conditional) statement
          - for (expression; conditional; expression ) statement
          - break/continue
          - variable = expression
          - print [ list of expressions ] [ > expression ]
          - printf format [ , list of expressions ] [ > expression ]
          - next (skips the remaining patterns on the current line of input)
          - exit (skips the rest of the current line)
          - [ list of statements ]   

• Awk has its own set of built-in variables.
  • In the examples below,
    • $0 represents an entire line, $1 the first field, $2 the second field, etc.
    • NF represents the number of fields in a line; $NF represents the last field in a line.
    • NR represents the current line number.

# Say we have this input file:
$ cat float

Wish I was floating in blue across the sky,
My imagination is strong,
And I often visit the days
When everything seemed so clear.
Now I wonder what I'm doing here at all...


$ awk '{print NF, $0}' float

9 Wish I was floating in blue across the sky,
4 My imagination is strong,
6 And I often visit the days
5 When everything seemed so clear.
9 Now I wonder what I'm doing here at all...

# Awk fields are delimited using white space by default.

# Say that the file awk2 contains these awk statements:
$ cat awk2

BEGIN { print "Start of file" }
{ print $1 $3 $NF }
END { print "End of file" }


$ awk -f awk2 float

Start of file: 
Wishwassky,
Myisstrong,
Andoftendays
Whenseemedclear.
Nowwonderall...
End of file

# Equivalently, on the command line:
$ awk 'BEGIN { print "Start of file" } { print $1 $3 $NF } END { print "End of file" }' float

$ awk 'NR > 1 && NR < 4 { print NR, $1, $3, $NF }' float

2 My is strong,
3 And often days

• Regular expressions in awk conditions

$ awk '/t.+e/ { print $0 }' float

Wish I was floating in blue across the sky,
And I often visit the days
When everything seemed so clear.
Now I wonder what I'm doing here at all...

$ awk '/strong/,/clear/ { print $0 }' float

My imagination is strong,
And I often visit the days
When everything seemed so clear.

• Awk uses 1 or more spaces as the default delimiter between fields.
• You can specify a delimiter with -F.

# See contents of /etc/passwd (delimited file using : as the delimiter)
$ cat /etc/passwd

# Extract fields of /etc/passwd using awk:
$ awk -F ":" '{ print $1, $3, $NF }' /etc/passwd # 1st, 3rd and last fields

• Can often use the cut text processing command instead of awk to extract fields in delimited lines of text.
  • If the delimiter is simple.

• SYNOPSIS

     tr -cds string1 string2

• tr options
  • -c complement of string1
  • -d delete string1
  • -s cause every repeated output char in string1 to be condensed into a single instance
  • Operates only on stdin

# Input file:
$ cat go.cart
go cart
racing


# Translating case: probably the most common use of tr
$ tr a-z A-Z < go.cart
GO CART
RACING


# Replace character ranges
$ tr a-c D-E < go.cart
go EDrt
rDEing


# Replace every non-"a" with "X"
$ tr -c a X < go.cart
XXXXaXXXXXaXXXXX


# Replace non-"a-z" with (new line)
# Could substitute '\n' for '\012'
$ tr -c a-z '\012' < go.cart
go                          
cart
racing


# Just delete characters
$ tr -d a-c < go.cart
go rt
ring

Create a script nospace to look for filenames with spaces in them in the current directory and to rename those files, converting the spaces to _ (underscore).

In a separate nospace directory, use touch to create a bunch of files that have spaces in the file names:

mkdir nospace
cd nospace
touch "report one" "report two" "report three" "reports four and five"

Link to nospace code

Download the following file using wget:

http://rockhopper.monmouth.edu/~jchung/cs370/modem.out

Write a pipeline to extract only the PPP ip address “72.68.102.102” from this file. Incorporate wget in the pipeline.

Complete the pipeline using sed, and later, awk.

Solution using sed:

# wget: Quiet (-q) wget output while sending fetched modem.out to stdout (-O -)
# grep: Match 1 line of modem.out containing "PPP"
# sed: Delete all information before the IP address
wget -q -O - http://rockhopper.monmouth.edu/~jchung/cs370/modem.out |
grep PPP |
sed 's/.*PPP *//'

Solution using awk:

# wget: Quiet (-q) wget output while sending fetched modem.out to stdout (-O -)
# grep: Match 1 line of modem.out containing "PPP"
# awk: Extract IP address, which is the 5th field ($5) in the line,
#           IP Network Address   PPP              72.68.102.102
wget -q -O - http://rockhopper.monmouth.edu/~jchung/cs370/modem.out |
grep PPP |
awk '{print $5}'

Write a script randlines to randomize the order of lines in standard input. Here's a start:

#!/bin/bash
# 
# randlines: Randomize lines in standard input
#
# Uses $RANDOM shell variable (found at the Advanced BASH
# Shell Scripting Guide).

while read myline   # Read one line of stdin at a time.
do
   echo $RANDOM $myline
done

Using either the head or tail command, create a variant of randlines that outputs one line at random from standard input.

Note: We are just re-implementing the functionality of the shuf command which randomizes lines of files and stdin.

Create a script called wordfreq to print the number of occurrences of all words in a file or standard input. Output must be sorted descending by number of occurrences.

Sample output if input is https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11231/pg11231.txt:

        738 the
        519 I
        508 to
        472 of
        434 and
        387 a
        305 in
        210 his
        204 that
        193 was
        191 my
        189 he
        169 you
        162 not
        150 with
        146 it
        141 me
        139 him
        121 Bartleby
        ...

We want wordfreq to be able to handle both STDIN and files given as arguments. So, it should be able to do something like wget -q -O - http://rockhopper.monmouth.edu/~jchung/cs370/modem.out | grep PPP | awk '{print $5}'

fortune | ./wordfreq      # wordfreq on STDIN

and also

./wordfreq input.txt      # wordfreq a input file

(and also)

./wordfreq input*.txt     # wordfreq multiple input files together

Link to wordfreq code

Study the cut text processing command. Apply cut to a file containing this list of names:

Wehman, John
Wehner, Monk
Weid, Kahn
Weigner, Ray
Weimann, Joseph
Weimmer, Nottingham
Weinberg, John
Weiner, Stephanie
Weiner, Joseph
Weinert, Molly
Weingarten, Joyce
Weinraub, John

Use cut to extract the first letters of the first names, convert to lower case, and write the letters to a file called firstinit.

       m
       j
       r
       k
       j
       ...
       and so on

Use cut again to extract the first 7 letters of the last names, convert to lower case, and write to a file called lastname.

       wehman
       wehner
       weid
       weigner
       weimann
       ...
       and so on

Study the paste text processing utility. Use paste to paste firstinit and lastname together, eliminating any spaces.

       mwehman
       jwehner
       rweid
       kweigner
       jweimann
       ...
       and so on

and redirect the result to a filed called userids.

Write a script makeuserids.sh to perform the above tasks on an input file.

Link to makeuserids.sh code | makeuserids-ps.sh (alternative version that uses process substitution)

Write a pipeline to turn the following input (saved in a file called 'servers'):

# comment blah
bigblah
{
   blah
   {
	  host MA-FXDWF-14
	  {
		   hardware ethernet 00:13:21:5C:11:16;
		   fixed-address 192.168.19.29;
	  }

	  host MA-FXDWF-15
	  {
		   hardware ethernet 00:13:21:5D:12:17;
		   fixed-address 192.168.19.30;
	  }

	  host MA-FXDWF-16
	  {
		   hardware ethernet 00:13:21:5E:13:18;
		   fixed-address 192.168.19.31;
	  }

	  ...
	  ...
	  # repeats 4000 times
	  ...
	  ...
   }
blah
}

into this (for import into a spreadsheet):

        MA-FXDWF-14???00:13:21:5C:11:16???192.168.19.29
        MA-FXDWF-15???00:13:21:5D:12:17???192.168.19.30
        MA-FXDWF-16???00:13:21:5E:13:18???192.168.19.31
        ...
        ...

• Solution #1:

grep -A 3 "host" servers | # find lines that contain "host", list 3 lines following each matching line
tr -d '\n' |               # delete new lines to put everything on one line
sed "s/--/\n/g" |          # insert a new line where "--" occurs ("--" separates the grep matches)
awk '{ print $2, $6, $8 }' | # print 2nd, 6th and 8th tokens, using default awk delimiter
tr -d ';' |                # delete semicolons
sed "s/ /???/g"            # replace single spaces with ???

Download a class roster. Using sed search and replace operations, convert the raw roster file to a list with the following format:

        Lastname-Firstname:StudentID

The list would be even better if Lastname and Firstname were both lower case, like this:

        lastname-firstname:StudentID

• Solution #1:

awk -F ", " '{ print $1"-"$2":"$3 }' roster | # using ", " as delimiter, extract and print last"-"first":"id
sed "s/ [A-Z]\.//" |                          # search for and delete middle initials (space, uppercase letter, period)
tr A-Z a-z                                    # lowercase

In the script webadvisor2roster take a roster from webadvisor and transform it into

Last, First [MI], ID

format, writing to the file roster.

Link to webadvisor2roster code

In the script randomseating, combine last names from a roster (see 7. above) and a seats file to randomize seating in HH 305.

Link to randomseating code

Link to randomseating-v2 code (preferred)

Sum and display the total points in quiz1-answers.txt.

• Solution

expression=$(cat quiz1-answers.txt | grep "(. point" | sed "s/[^0-9]//g" | tr '\n' '+' | sed "s/+$//")
answer=$(( expression ))
echo $answer

or

echo $(( $(cat quiz1-answers.txt | grep "(. point" | sed "s/[^0-9]//g" | tr '\n' '+' | sed "s/+$//") ))

or

# use bc, a command line calculator
echo $(cat quiz1-answers.txt | grep "(. point" | sed "s/[^0-9]//g" | tr '\n' '+' | sed "s/+$//") | bc

#
# pipeline breakdown
#
grep ". point"       | # find lines that contain "(n point(s))"
sed "s/[^0-9]//g"    | # delete all non-digit chars, leaving only a column of numbers
tr '\n' '+'          | # put all on single line, separated by "+"
sed "s/+$//"           # delete last "+" at end

Sort the following string from a scavenger hunt challenge:

22fl6abbz7yaabcdeezez99178

See the fold core text processing utility.

• Solution

echo 22fl6abbz7yaabcdeezez99178 |
fold -w 1                       | # lines can be only 1 char wide (print string vertically)
sort                            |
tr -d '\n'                        # remove newlines to return to horizontal 

Write the text2png script that turns standard input into a large wallpaper-type image file.

This will be a fairly long shell script that demonstrates:

• using functions
• handling standard input into a script
• handling script command line options

Link to text2png code | text2png_getopts (alternate version that uses getopts)