How to replace delimiter of specific column

Question

This is the abc.txt file which consist of 5 columns:

ID|first name|middle name|last name|address 
1 | john     | whatever  | smith   | somewhere

How do I get this output:

ID|first name middle name last name|address
1 | john whatever smith            |somewhere

How do I replace the '|' with space only on specific columns to a new file def.txt. In this case, 2nd column until 4th column.

Answer 1

awk solution:

awk 'BEGIN{ FS=OFS="|" }{ cs=$2$3$4; gsub(/ +/, " ", cs); print $1,sprintf("%-32s",cs),$5 }' abc.txt

• FS=OFS="|" - field separator

• cs=$2$3$4 - concatenated 2nd, 3rd and 4th field

• gsub(/ +/, " ", cs) - removing redundant spaces

• sprintf("%32s",cs) - formatted concatenated string

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The output:

ID|first namemiddle namelast name  |address 
1 | john whatever smith            | somewhere

Answer 2

Using sed:

sed -e 's,|\([^|]*\)|\([^|]*\)|,|\1 \2 ,' abc.txt > def.txt

Here is a nice introduction that covers the used s features.