How can I set awk delimiter to either string or character?

Question

How to use a string and another character as simultaneous delimiters in awk?

sdlcb@ubuntu:~/AMD_C/SO$ echo "111:222text333:444" | awk -F ':' '{print $2}'
222text333

sdlcb@ubuntu:~/AMD_C/SO$ echo "111:222text333:444" | awk -F "text" '{print $2}'
333:444

So the question is, how can we use " text " and " : " as delimiters at the same time, so that {print $2} will print 222 as output? Consider input as in the examples above.

Answer 1

You can use simple alternation

$ echo "111:222text333:444" | awk -F "text|:" '{print $2}'
222

What it does

• -F "text|:" sets the field seperator as text or :

Test

To ensure that this correctly delimits the fields

$echo "111:222text333:444" | awk -F "text|:" '{print $1,$2,$3,$4}'
111 222 333 444

EDIT

If you want to use | as delimitter, escape the | as

$ echo "111:222text333:444|hello" | awk -F '\\||text|:' '{print $1,$2,$3,$4,$5}'
111 222 333 444 hello