multiple Field Separators in awk

Question

i have this string

-foo {{0.000 0.000} {648.0 0.000} {648.0 1980.0} {0.000 1980.0} {0.000 0.000}}

i want to separate it to numbers and iterate over them ,thanks tried to use Field separator without success how can i do it with awk?

Answer 1

Try doing this :

awk -F'}+|{+| ' '{for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) if ($i ~ "[0-9]") print $i}' file.txt

The Field Separator FS (the -F switch) can be a character, a word, a regex or a class of characters.

You can use this too :

awk 'BEGIN{FS="}+|{+| "} {for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) if($i ~ "[0-9]")print $i}' file.txt

explanations

• foo|bar|base is a regex where it can match any of the strings separated by the |
• in }+|{+|, we have the choice to match a literal } at least one : +, or a literal { at least one : +, or a space.
• you can use a class of character too to do the same : [{} ], both works