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I need to get first 9 words from a pipe delimited file and then next 9 words. Any help is appreciated.

cat a.txt
a|b|c|d|e|f|g|h|i|j|k|l|m|n|o|p|q|r|s|t|u|v|w|x|y|z|

cat new.ksh
#! /bin/ksh
a=`awk -F "|" ' print NF-1 ' a.txt`
echo $a

Expected Output:
a|b|c|d|e|f|g|h|i|
j|k|l|m|n|o|p|q|r|
s|t|u|v|w|x|y|z

sed -r 's/([^|]*|)9/&n/g' a.txt

Explanation:
[^|] Not a |.
[^|]*| One field (without |), followed by a |.
([^|]*|)9 9 fields, each followed by a |.
&n Replace by the matched string followed by a newline.

Try this:

mayankp@mayank:~/$ cat a.txt| tr "|" "n" |head -9 | tr "n" "|" > output.txt
mayankp@mayank:~/$ echo >> output.txt
mayankp@mayank:~/$ cat a.txt| tr "|" "n" | tail -18|head -9| tr "n" "|" >> output.txt
mayankp@mayank:~/$ echo >> output.txt
mayankp@mayank:~/$ cat a.txt| tr "|" "n" | tail -9 | tr "n" "|" >> output.txt
mayankp@mayank:~/$ echo >> output.txt
mayankp@mayank:~/$ cat output.txt 
a|b|c|d|e|f|g|h|i|
j|k|l|m|n|o|p|q|r|
s|t|u|v|w|x|y|z||

I pure ksh version:

IFS='|'
typeset -a str=( $( < a.txt ) )
len=$#str[@]
bar='|'
for ((ii=0; ii<len; ii+=9))
do
 max=9
 (( ii+9 > len )) && max=$(( len-ii ))
 for ((jj=0; jj<max; jj++))
 do
 element=$(( ii+jj ))
 (( element == len-1 )) && bar=''
 echo -e "$str[$element]$barc"
 done
 echo
done

Explanation:

• 
  IFS: This is the Internal field separator, normally this is space and tab but if it is reassigned, it separates other types of data.


• 
  typeset -a We are creating an array to hold the data.


• 
  str=( $( < a.txt ) ) We read in the data from the a.txt array as elements of the array.


• 
  len=$#str[@] We need to know how long the array is so we know how much to print out.


• Outer for loop, you wanted to see the values in groups of 9. This steps through the array nine at a time.


• To avoid running off the end, I created a variable max that will hold how many elements are on the current line. The we guess 9 and then updated it if necessary.


• 
  (( ii+9 > len )) && max=$(( len-ii )) This is doing an integer comparison of ii+9 against the length. If the condition is true, we update max with the lower value.


• Inner for loop, this where we step through the elements of the line.


• 
  element=... We want the ii+jj element so here we calculate the value.


• 
  (( element == len-1 )) && bar='' You had no bar at the end. To avoid printing the bar, we use a bar variable that we turn to nothing when done.


• 
  echo -e "$str[$element]$barc" Here we print that element along with the bar variable. The c says do not end the print with a newline. The -e is required to get the c to work.


• 
  echo Since we did not get linefeeds for each element, we need to put it out now that we have 9 elements.

This version also works with bash.