Hi all,

I've a flat file and has 10 lines or records that are not delimited by any space or delimiter. For each line, ie: SSN is position 10 to 19 and trailer death status is on line 10, position 20 to 21.

How do I view data in flat file where I specify a line number, from position and to position? Pls specify what function, command, syntax should I use, please provide an example.

Newbie

You can use a while loop to loop tru the file
And use cut -c
see tread Shell script that parses a CSV file, builds sql insert calls, then executes them for example
Or to view e.g. line 3
sed -n '3p' flatfile | cut -c10-19,20-21

It was really helpful as it will help me automate the flat file validation instead of the tedious manual validation using TextPad.