Reminders

$ awk - F "#|_" '{print $2}' file how am Where the files are numbered as follows: hello#how_are_you i#am_very#well_thank#you ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6

sort - t _ - k 2 - g data . file -t separator -k key/column -g general numeric sort

Good news! awk field separator can be a regular expression. You just need to use -F"<separator1>|<separator2>|..." : awk - F "/|=" '{print $3, $5, $NF}' file Returns: tc0001 tomcat7 . 1 demo . example . com tc0001 tomcat7 . 2 quest . example . com tc0001 tomcat7 . 5 www . example . com Here: -F="/|=" sets the input field separator to either / or = . Then, it sets the output field separator to a tab. {print $3, $5, $NF} prints the 3rd, 5th and last fields based on the input field separator. See another example: $ cat file hello#how_are_you i#am_very#well_thank#you This file has two fields separators, # and _ . If we want to print the second field regardless of the separator being one or the other, let's...