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Fellow monks

I am building an application that should read and collect data from many NetApp filers and store them in a database for making periodical usage reports. To avoid bothering production filers during the early stage of development I created a file for each filer containing the output of the quota report command.

The output looks like:

                                 K-Bytes           Files
Type       ID    Volume    Tree  Used     Limit    Used    Limit   Quo
+ta Specifier
----- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- ------- ------- ---
+------------
tree         7     data pre_appltop   3449512   4194304   30723       
+- /vol/data/pre_appltop
tree         6     data pre_appsdata  23327540  31457280  142938      
+ - /vol/data/pre_appsdata
[download]

To simulate the command output, I'd need to read the file line by line, print if it doesn't begin with tree, otherwise substitute the fifth field (say: $field[4] with int rand $field[4]). Since the dashed line on top of the report gave me an hint for creating a sprintf format, I found that this one-liner just does the job I need:

perl -pe 'next unless /^tree/ ; @f=split ; $f[4] = int rand $f[4] ; $_ = sprintf "%-5s %8d %-8s %-8s %8d %8d %7d %7d %-15s\n",@f' filer.quota.report

But what if I hadn't any hint? How would you replace the fourth field leaving the line formatting in a sane state?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions

Ciao!
--bronto

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

In reply to changing a portion of a line leaving its formatting intact by bronto

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