Hi,

How can I get the value for Name and City for both records? Both records start with From: and end with [End Order]. There are blank lines between each field within a record. However, each record does not have the same number of fields (like first record does not have any City field and second record does). Therefore, I don't want to hard-code their positions ($1, $2, etc).

I was trying the following to get value for Name:
awk '{ print $2 }' RS="[End Order]" Sample.txt

Please help!

Thanks.
-Parul
parani19@hotmail.com

I have the following records in Sample.txt:
From:
Name: aaa

Street: bbb

[End Order]
From:
Name: ddd

Street: eee

City: fff

[End Order]

You could do something like this (you get an additional record with a blank name and city at the end because you are using [End Order] as a row seperator)...

awk 'BEGIN {RS="[End Order]"} {
name=""; city=""
for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) {
if ($i=="Name:") {
name=$(i+1);
}
if ($i=="City:") {
city=$(i+1);
}
}
print NR,"Name =",name,"; City =",city;
}' << !!
From:
Name: aaa

Street: bbb

[End Order]
From:
Name: ddd

Street: eee

City: fff

[End Order]
!!
1 Name = aaa ; City =
2 Name = ddd ; City = fff
3 Name = ; City =

Your names and cities will probably contain whitespace, so I'd suggest doing something like this instead...

awk 'BEGIN {FS=":"} {
if ($1=="Name") {
name=$2;
}
else if ($1=="City") {
city=$2;
}
else if ($1=="[End Order]") {
print ++counter, "Name = ", name, "; City = ", city;
name="";
city="";
}
else {
next;
}
}' << !!
From:
Name: Some Body

Street: Some Lane

[End Order]
From:
Name: Tiny Tom

Street: Some Road

City: A Big Town

[End Order]
!!