Split string on a backslash ("\") delimiter in awk?

Question

I am trying to split the string in a file based on some delimiter.But I am not able to achieve it correctly... Here is my code below.

awk 'var=split($2,arr,'\'); {print $var}' file1.dat

Here is my sample data guys.

Col1 Col2
abc  123\abc
abcd 123\abcd

Desire output:

Col1 Col2
abc  abc
abcd abcd

Answer 1

You don't need to call split. Just use \\ as field separator:

echo 'a\b\c\d' | awk -F\\ '{printf("%s,%s,%s,%s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4)}'

OUTPUT:

a,b,c,d

Answer 2

Sample data and output is my best guess at your requirement

 echo '1:2\\a\\b:3' | awk -F: '{ 
     n=split($2,arr,"\\")
     # print "#dbg:n=" n
     var=arr[3]
     print var
     }'

output

b

Recall that split returns the number of fields that it found to split. You can uncomment the debug line and you'll see the value 3 returned.

Note also that for my test, I had to use 2 '\' chars for 1 to be processed. I don't think you'll need that in a file, but if this doesn't work with a file, then try adding extra '\' as needed to your data. I tried several variations on how to use '\', and this seems the most straightforward. Others are welcome to comment!

I hope this helps.