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awk

How to count a pattern inside a phrase?

For example:

/A/B/C/D/

I know that this command:

awk -FS'/' '{print $1}'

Prints the first pattern: A

But, how can I count the number of '/' inside that phrase? The output will be: 5

Solution

  • You might inform GNU AWK that / is field using FPAT built-in variable and then check number of fields, let file.txt content be

    /A/B/C/D/

    then

    awk 'BEGIN{FPAT="/"}{print NF}' file.txt

    gives output

    5

    (tested in GNU Awk 5.1.0)