Making Each Character a Separate Field
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There are times when you may want to examine each character of a
record separately. This can be done in `gawk' by simply assigning the
null string (`""') to `FS'. In this case, each individual character in
the record becomes a separate field. For example:
$ echo a b | gawk 'BEGIN { FS = "" }
> {
> for (i = 1; i <= NF; i = i + 1)
> print "Field", i, "is", $i
> }'
-| Field 1 is a
-| Field 2 is
-| Field 3 is b
Traditionally, the behavior of `FS' equal to `""' was not defined.
In this case, most versions of Unix `awk' simply treat the entire record
as only having one field. (d.c.) In compatibility mode (Note:Command-Line Options.), if `FS' is the null string, then
`gawk' also behaves this way.