Replacing number with the same value (number) of one characters

Question

I have to find all file types using file -b $(find . -type f), sort them into unique categories, and print out top 4 most categories where the number is replaced with equal number of "#". The output should look something like this:

 8 empty                      : ########
 6 ASCII text                 : ######
 3 Vim swap file, version 7.4 : ###
 1 UTF-8 Unicode text         : #

I can't figure out how to print out the number of files in each category as "#" marks.

I want get the number on each line as a value and put same amount of "#" marks at the end.

↑ that doesn't sound anything like the question you've asked at the top. Please go back and [edit] the question to make it clear. — roaima, Mar 25 '17 at 12:36
I have edited the question and i hope it is more understandable. — Buri, Mar 25 '17 at 13:03
Yeah it is an assignment. I am totaly new to scripting so i am taking everything just if it works. Is there any better way to solve this? — Buri, Mar 25 '17 at 13:06
I am allowed to use awk, but not perl. So can this be done by using awk? — Buri, Mar 25 '17 at 13:20
I apologize, i forgot to mension that i cant use arrays. Is there any other way? — Buri, Mar 25 '17 at 13:38
I have no idea how to figure this out. I am searching like mad but nothing useful. I dont know how to get the desired output. — Buri, Mar 25 '17 at 14:08
http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/36959/117549 may or may not be helpful — Jeff Schaller, Mar 25 '17 at 14:32
I am sorry. But when i do `find . -type f -exec file -b {} \; | sort | uniq -c` How do i use the number from `uniq -c` in that awk? I am just trying to understand it. — Buri, Mar 25 '17 at 15:26
awk operates on fields so e.g. `| awk '{printf $0" : "; for(c=0;c<$1;c++){printf "#"}; printf "\n"}'` — don_crissti, Mar 25 '17 at 15:37
Thank you so much! I would be lost without your help. And i am sorry for being such a pain in the arse. — Buri, Mar 25 '17 at 16:17

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 25 '17 at 16:05

To answer your main question "how to symbolize a number N with a sequence of N characters, here is a shell command that will do exactly that:

n=17          # Number to translate to a sequence
printf "%${n}s" '' | tr ' ' '#'

(alternate syntax: printf '%*s' "$n" '' | tr ' ' '#'; there are other alternatives, you get the idea)

What it does is generate a blank line made of n spaces (the printf part) and then convert each space to the desired character (the tr part).

Assuming you have a command count_files that output the list you have included in your question, this command may be used like this:

count_files \
| while read n type; do 
    printf '%4d %-30s %s\n' "$n" "$type" "$(printf "%${n}s" '' | tr ' ' '#')"
done

... and you will get this:

   8 empty                          ########
   6 ASCII text                     ######
   3 Vim swap file, version 7.4     ###
   1 UTF-8 Unicode text             #

Kusalananda · Answer 2 · 2018-06-22T13:33:00.640

In Perl, a character may be repeated a number of times using the x operator:

$ perl -e 'print "#" x 10, "\n"'
##########

Let's use that.

Rather than parsing the output of find:

find . -type f -exec file -b {} + | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn |
perl -ne 'chomp; s/\s+(\d+)\s+// && printf("%-3d %-50s: %s\n", $1, $_, "#" x $1)'

The first part, up until the Perl script, will produce output like

  23 ASCII C program text
  12 ASCII text
  10 ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable, x86-64, version 1
   3 ASCII English text
   1 ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1

The Perl script will remove the trailing newline with chomp and then pick out the number into $1. It then uses printf() to print out the number, file type, and as many # characters as indicated by the number.

The final output will be something like

23  ASCII C program text                              : #######################
12  ASCII text                                        : ############
10  ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable, x86-64, version 1     : ##########
3   ASCII English text                                : ###
1   ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1   : #

Replacing number with the same value (number) of one characters

2 Answers2