Cfrgtkky

I have file and for example values in it:

1 value1.1 value1.2

2 value2.1

3 value3.1 value3.2 value3.3

I need to read values using the shell script from it but number of columns in each row is different!!!
I know that if for example I want to read second column I will do it like this (for row number as input parameter)

$ awk -v key=1 '$1 == key { print $2 }' input.txt

value1.1

But as I mentioned number of columns is different for each row.
How to make this read dynamic?

For example:
if input parameter is 1 it means I should read columns from the first row so output should be

value1.1 value1.2

if input parameter is 2 it means I should read columns from the second row so output should be

value2.1

if input parameter is 3 it means I should read columns from the third row so output should be

value3.1 value3.2 value3.2

Th point is that number of columns is not static and I should read columns from that specific row until the end of the row.

Thank you

Then you can simply say:

awk -v key=1 'NR==key' input.txt

UPDATED

If you want to process with the column data, there will be several ways.

With awk you can say something like:

awk -v key=3 'NR==key {

    for (i=1; i<=NF; i++)

        printf "column %d = %sn", i, $i

}' input.txt

which outputs:

column 1 = value3.1

column 2 = value3.2

column 3 = value3.2

In awk you can access each column value by $1, $2, $3 directly or by $i indirectly where variable i holds either of 1, 2, 3.

If you prefer going with bash, try something like:

line=$(awk -v key=3 'NR==key' input.txt)

set -- $line    # split into columns



for ((i=1; i<=$#; i++)); do

    echo column $i = ${!i}

done

which outputs the same results.

In bash the indirect access is a little bit complex and you need to say ${!i} where i is a variable name.

Hope this helps.