RegEx for matching strings in 2nd and 5th columns using grep

Question

I have a file (test.txt) that contains string such as:

name1,6.5.8.12,specs1,version1,['66.55.89.12']
name2,19.13.13.159,specs2,version2,['13.13.173.59'; '14.19.232.42']
name3,141.101.196.40,specs3,version3,['11.01.196.0']

1) I want to capture all the strings in the 2nd and 5th columns which are formatted as four numbers separated by dots, and each number can be up to 3 digits.

2) There is one string in the 2nd column, but unlimited strings in the fifth column but they are separated by semicolon.

I tried to use this command to try to capture all fifth column strings (I still need to find out how to capture both 2nd and 5th column), but this command did not work in the first place. It produced empty file:

cat test.txt | cut -d ',' -f5 | grep -P -o '\d{1-3}\.\d{1-3}\.\d{1-3}\.\d{1-3}' > result.txt

How to capture the special format string in the 2nd and fifth column usng grep. Where the strings are four numbers (from 1 to 3 digits) separated by dots. There is only one string in the 2nd column, but unlimited strings in the 5th but separated by semicolon?

EDIT: The expected output:

6.5.8.12
66.55.89.12
19.13.13.159
13.13.173.59
14.19.232.42
141.101.196.40
11.01.196.0

Please also note that I want the results sorted and unique sort -u. I do not have repeated strings in the example, but I want to avoid repetition if found in my real file.

Answer 1

Are there other fields that could hold your pattern (the sample doesn't have any)? If not, try

grep -Eo "([0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}" file | sort -u
11.01.196.0
13.13.173.59
141.101.196.40
14.19.232.42
19.13.13.159
6.5.8.12
66.55.89.12

If you want it sorted numerically, use sort's -g option.

For your own solution given in the question, try -f2,5 for the cut fields.

Answer 2

Your avoidance of awk needs some rationale in the question, but anyways, here you go:

$ cut -d, -f2,5 file | egrep -wo '([0-9]{1,3}[.]){3}[0-9]{1,3}'
6.5.8.12
66.55.89.12
19.13.13.159
13.13.173.59
14.19.232.42
141.101.196.40
11.01.196.0

If you want the output sort+uniq'ed, you can add yourself a | sort -u at the end of the pipeline ;-)

Answer 3

Here's a step by step solution using cut+tr+sort

First, get the required fields

$ cut -d, -f2,5 ip.txt
6.5.8.12,['66.55.89.12']
19.13.13.159,['13.13.173.59'; '14.19.232.42']
141.101.196.40,['11.01.196.0']

Then, delete all unwanted characters

$ cut -d, -f2,5 ip.txt | tr -d "]'[ "
6.5.8.12,66.55.89.12
19.13.13.159,13.13.173.59;14.19.232.42
141.101.196.40,11.01.196.0

Then, translate , and ; to newline so that each value is on its own line and then sort it uniquely

$ cut -d, -f2,5 ip.txt | tr -d "]'[ " | tr ',;' '\n' | sort -u
11.01.196.0
13.13.173.59
141.101.196.40
14.19.232.42
19.13.13.159
6.5.8.12
66.55.89.12

Answer 4

Fixed my example, but it is not elegant.

Basically, awk separates out the fields, we use sed to get rid of unwanted chars and then we sort the output. Sorry, no grep in this answer.

cat test.txt |awk -F'[,;]' '{print $2"\n" $5}'  | sed 's/\(\[\|\]\)//g' |sed "s/'//g" |sort -r