AWK/SED remove columns that contain parenthesis

Question

Hi all,

I was wondering if it would be possible to remove columns within a data file that contain any parenthesis that can be contained in ANY column. For example

...
John Doe (Tech Department) 09/12/2009 555-555-5555
Jane Smith 09/12/2009 555-555-5555 (Suspended)
Alfred doe 555-555-5555 (Vacation) 09/09/2011
...

So then I would like the output to look like

...
John Do 09/12/2009 555-555-5555
Jane Smith 09/12/2009 555-555-5555
Alfred doe 555-555-5555 09/09/2011
...

I was thinking of using a wildcard for the text in between the parenthesis? something like /(*)/ ?

Thanks for any help,

Tomek

Answer 1

$ cat file
John Doe (Tech Department) 09/12/2009 (somethign else) 555-555-5555
Jane Smith 09/12/2009 555-555-5555 (Suspended)
Alfred doe 555-555-5555 (Vacation) 09/09/2011

$ awk -vRS=")" -F"(" '{ for(i=1;i<=NF;i+=2) {print $i}}' ORS="" file
John Doe  09/12/2009  555-555-5555
Jane Smith 09/12/2009 555-555-5555
Alfred doe 555-555-5555  09/09/2011

$ sed -r 's/\(.[^)]*\)//g' file
John Doe  09/12/2009  555-555-5555
Jane Smith 09/12/2009 555-555-5555
Alfred doe 555-555-5555  09/09/2011

$ awk '{gsub(/\(.[^)]*\)/,"") }1' file
John Doe  09/12/2009  555-555-5555
Jane Smith 09/12/2009 555-555-5555
Alfred doe 555-555-5555  09/09/2011

Answer 2

If Perl is okay, you can do:

$ cat file
John Doe (Tech Department) 09/12/2009 555-555-5555
Jane Smith 09/12/2009 555-555-5555 (Suspended)
Alfred doe 555-555-5555 (Vacation) 09/09/2011

$ perl -pe 's/\(.*?\)//g' file    
John Doe  09/12/2009 555-555-5555
Jane Smith 09/12/2009 555-555-5555 
Alfred doe 555-555-5555  09/09/2011