mjhjmtu

I would like to extract parts of some files and concatenate them into another but without writing an intermediate file.

For instance:

$ cat textExample.txt 
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door-
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."
$ cat textExample.txt | tr -d "n" | awk 'NR==1' | awk 'print substr($0, 8, 9)'
marvelled
$ cat textExample.txt | tr -d "n" | awk 'NR==1' | awk 'print substr($0, 77, 6)'
answer
$ cat textExample.txt | tr -d "n" | awk 'NR==1' | awk 'print substr($0, 189, 7)'
blessed

In order to concatenate the sentences together, one file could be written:

$ cat textExample.txt | tr -d "n" | awk 'NR==1' | awk 'print substr($0, 8, 9)'| tr "n" " " > intermediate.txt
$ cat textExample.txt | tr -d "n" | awk 'NR==1' | awk 'print substr($0, 77, 6)' | tr "n" " " >> intermediate.txt
$ cat textExample.txt | tr -d "n" | awk 'NR==1' | awk 'print substr($0, 189, 7)' >> intermediate.txt
$ cat intermediate.txt 
marvelled answer blessed

or multiple awk commands could be used (although I could not remove the newline):

$ cat textExample.txt | tr -d "n" | awk 'NR==1' | awk 'print substr($0, 8, 9); print substr($0, 77, 6); print substr($0, 189, 7)' 
marvelled
answer
blessed

I was wondering whether cat could be used directly to concatenate the different words together without relying on an intermediate file, something like:

$ cat first word | cat second word | cat third word 
first second third

Thank you

This works for me if I understand you correctly:

cat textExample.txt | tr -d "n" | awk 'print substr($0, 8, 9) " " substr($0, 77, 6) " " substr($0, 189, 7)'

I don't get what you intend.

Yet try :

 ... | tr -d 'n' |
awk 'printf "%s %s %sn", substr($0, 8, 9),substr($0, 77, 6),substr($0, 189, 7)'

which give with your input

tr -d 'n' < se | awk 'printf "%s %s %sn", substr($0, 8, 9),substr($0, 77, 6),substr($0, 189, 7)'
marvelled answer blessed

• have a look at printf, which by default do not end with a newline (contrary to print )

note also you can use subshell

( cmd1 arg 1
 cmd2 arg for 2
 cmd 3 ) > result

which will put output of cmds to result.

With bash

cat extract_words.sh

#!/bin/bash
concat=" "
min=$(($6+$7))
while read line
do
 concat="$concat$line"
 if test "$#concat" -ge "$min" ; then
 break
 fi
done < "$1"
echo "$concat:$2:$3" "$concat:$4:$5" "$concat:$6:$7"

You call it like that

./extract_words.sh "textExample.txt" 8 9 77 6 189 7