Currently when I run a grep command on a visitors group that I had created
grep visitors:x:1011: /etc/group
This is a sample result of the above command, as the actual result is too long.
visitors:x:1011:ellipsiscoterie,magnetcommonest,wizardmeans,beakskeletal,lemonwellmade,ralphpaperclips etc..
How do I display the above result as shown below (without visitors:x:1101 and separating the commas), as I have difficulty doing so.
ellipsiscoterie
magnetcommonest
wizardmeans
beakskeletal
lemonwellmade
ralphpaperclips
Using awk, you can set the field separated to a colon using -F: and check if the string starts with visitors:x:1011:
As the comma separated values always seems to be at the end, split the last field $NF on a comma and loop the splitted values.
awk -F: '
/^visitors:x:1011:/ {
count=split($NF, ary, ",");
for(i=1; i<=count; i++) print ary[i];
}' /etc/group
With your shown samples please try following awk program.
awk -F':' '/^visitors:x:1011/ && NF==4{gsub(/,/,ORS,$4);print $4}' /etc/group
OR in case entry visitors:x:1011 comes only once in your file then try following:
awk -F':' '/^visitors:x:1011/ && NF==4{gsub(/,/,ORS,$4);print $4;exit}' /etc/group
Explanation: Simple explanation would be, making field separator as : for all lines. Then in main program, checking condition if line starts from visitors:x:1011 and number of fields are 4 then globally substitute comma with new line(ORS) in 4th field and print it.
OR if line with visitors:x:1011 comes once and 4th field is NULL(means no entry present which is obvious in some cases) and you want to print message for it then try following:
awk -F':' '/^visitors:x:1011/ && NF==4{if($4==""){print "NO entry found in /etc/group"} else{gsub(/,/,ORS,$4);print $4};exit}' /etc/group