awk: program limit exceeded: maximum number of fields size=32767

Question

when i am running my shell script in ubuntu 14.04 i am getting an error like below

awk: program limit exceeded: maximum number of fields size=32767
    FILENAME="ensemble_features/Training_BOOKS_POS_Bigram_with_stemming_BOOLEAN_FVT.csv" FNR=1 NR=1
cut: invalid byte, character or field list
Try 'cut --help' for more information.
-1
cut: invalid byte, character or field list
Try 'cut --help' for more information.
6656
user@user-Lenovo-IdeaPad-Z410:~/Thesis/BOOKS$ bash Training_POS_Uni_Bi.sh
awk: program limit exceeded: maximum number of fields size=32767
    FILENAME="ensemble_features/Training_BOOKS_POS_Bigram_with_stemming_BOOLEAN_FVT.csv" FNR=1 NR=1
cut: invalid byte, character or field list
Try 'cut --help' for more information.
-1
cut: invalid byte, character or field list
Try 'cut --help' for more information.
6656

i am adding my script below

cd /home/user/Thesis/BOOKS/Features/Training/POSITIVE/
fname="ensemble_features"
mkdir $fname

cp /home/user/Thesis/BOOKS/Features/Training/POSITIVE/Training_BOOKS_POS_unigram_FVT_with_stemming_BOOLEAN.csv ensemble_features/
cp /home/user/Thesis/BOOKS/Features/Training/POSITIVE/Training_BOOKS_POS_Bigram_with_stemming_BOOLEAN_FVT.csv ensemble_features/


mkdir "proces"
cnt=0
for file in $fname/*
do
    #Number of columns
    num=`awk 'BEGIN {FS=",";c=0};{if (c==0 ){print NF; c=1}}END{}' $file`
    if [[ cnt -eq 0 ]];then
        cut -d, -f $num $file >class.csv
        cnt=1;
    fi
    num=$((num-1))
    echo $num
    nfname=`basename $file`

    #Cut the columns
    cut -d',' -f1-$num $file > proces/cutlast$nfname
done
#Paste multiple csv
paste -d',' proces/* > comb.csv
paste -d, comb.csv class.csv > Training_BOOKS_Unigram_Bigram_POS_Ensemble_Features_BOOLEAN.csv
rm comb.csv
rm class.csv
rm -r proces
rm -r ensemble_features

my input files contain 38453 columns and 6656 columns respectively.Anybody can help me to correct this error?

Answer 1

On ubuntu awk is a soft link to some variant of awk, nowadays by default it is mawk. Try to install gawk. gawk does not have a limitation on the number of fields in a record.

BTW, python may be a better long term solution, if you got the time to learn it.