[GRASS-user] combine & edit multiple text files

[maning sambale]

Hi!

I have a number of ascii files downloaded from ASTR fire project from
the ESA Ionia showing monthly fire incidences from 1996-2006.  I
intend to combine all these files, remove unwanted columns and get the
records from my current region/study area only. All records combined
is 929,155 records!  My guess is I need to use the cat, cut, awk
commands.

Challenge: the files have different record formating

file 1 is like this (take note of the space as the delimiter):

Date   Time 	  Lat       Lon     NDVI  Station
020201 032428.163  -38.379  -66.334 -.-- ESR
020201 032428.163  -38.375  -66.323 -.-- ESR
020201 032428.312  -38.378  -66.359 -.-- ESR
020201 032428.312  -38.374  -66.348 -.-- ESR
020201 032428.312  -38.371  -66.337 -.-- ESR

file 2 looks like this:
    Date  	        Orbit  Time           Lat 	  Lon
    20030101        4384     81704.016    19.364  -155.103
    20030101        4384     81704.164    19.373  -155.105
    20030101        4384     81704.164    19.375  -155.096
    20030101        4385    100833.648    56.638   161.281
    20030101        4386    130756.352   -20.340   134.099

I only need the columns for date, time, lat, lon

Here's what I did:

#combine all file (monthly)
cat 9904ESA01.FIRE 9905ESA01.FIRE 9906ESA01.FIRE 9907ESA01.FIRE
9908ESA01.FIRE ... > test

# cut only desired columns (1_4) delimeiter is spac ' '
cut -d' ' -f1 test > 1
cut -d' ' -f2 test > 2
cut -d' ' -f3 test > 3
cut -d' ' -f4 test > 4

# combine all columns
paste 1 2 3 4 > test5

example output:

021231 223941.761   11.035   -5.016 -.-- ESR
021231 224005.303   12.226   -6.243 -.-- ESR
    20030101        4380     25934.057   -37.022   -69.589
    20030101        4382     45951.090    33.005  -110.772

The problem is for the file example 1, lat and lon columns contain
spaces other than the delimiter example " -38.00" while another is
"120.00"  In the file2 example, more spaces are there.  I think I need
to process different file formats separately but how do I solve the
problem for spaces in the lat/lon columns?

One last question how do I get the records for my current region only?

north:      20:00:01.49976N
south:      5:00:01.499767N
west:       115:00:01.5012E
east:       130:00:01.501193E


I'm starting to understand awk (reading the gawk manual right now) but
may take a while to get do something magical.

Thanks!

Maning

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