replace string on a specific column of multiple files from unix terminal

Question

I have multiple tab delimited files with same column names. An example file is attached as a snapshot.

Now, I would like to replace every 'INV' in coloumn 4 with 'RAC'. I wrote the following awk code. However it does not work well. Can anyone check my code?

#!/bin/bash
path=path/to/dir/containing/the/files/to/be/processed
for file in `ls $path`
do
echo processing $file
awk '{ if ($4 == "INS") {$4 = "RAC"; print} else { print }; }'  $file>  ${file}_new.txt
done;

Please include sample input data as text. Anyone trying to help you will otherwise have to type in the data by hand. — Kusalananda
– Kusalananda, Commented Jun 20, 2016 at 9:04
This can be useful http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/218896/how-to-replace-value-for-a-given-condition-in-specific-column-of-file — sumitya
– sumitya, Commented Jun 20, 2016 at 10:04

sjsam · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-20 09:11:07Z

1

Do not parse ls output as shown [ here ].

find /path/to/files -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | while read -r -d '' filename
do
awk '$4=="INV"{$4="RAC"}{print}' "$filename" > tempfile && mv tempfile "$filename"
done

would do it

edited Jun 20, 2016 at 9:11

answered Jun 20, 2016 at 9:04

sjsam

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2 Comments

sjsam Over a year ago

@123 : Indeed.. Corrected that

panbar Over a year ago

Thanks! It worked now. I appreciate the suggestions.

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