Insert a new line at nth character after nth occurence of a pattern via a shell script - unix

Question

I have a single line big string which has '~|~' as delimiter. 10 fields make up a row and the 10th field is 9 characters long. I want insert a new line after each row, meaning insert a \n at 10 character after (9,18,27 ..)th occurrence of '~|~'
Is there any quick single line sed/awk option available without looping through the string?
I have used
sed -e's/\(\([^~|~]*~|~\)\{9\}[^~|~]*\)~|~/\1\n/g'
but it will replace every 10th occurrence with a new line. I want to keep the delimiter but add a new line after 9 characters in field 10
cat test.txt
one~|~two~|~three~|~four~|~five~|~six~|~seven~|~eight~|~nine~|~ten1234562one~|~2two~|~2three~|~2four~|~2five~|~2six~|~2seven~|~2eight~|~2nine~|~2ten1234563one~|~3two~|~3three~|~3four~|~3five~|~3six~|~3seven~|~3eight~|~3nine~|~3ten123456
sed -e's/\(\([^~|~]*~|~\)\{9\}[^~|~]*\)~|~/\1\n/g' test.txt
one~|~two~|~three~|~four~|~five~|~six~|~seven~|~eight~|~nine~|~ten1234562one
2two~|~2three~|~2four~|~2five~|~2six~|~2seven~|~2eight~|~2nine~|~2ten1234563one~|~3two
3three~|~3four~|~3five~|~3six~|~3seven~|~3eight~|~3nine~|~3ten123456
Below is what I want
one~|~two~|~three~|~four~|~five~|~six~|~seven~|~eight~|~nine~|~ten123456
2one~|~2two~|~2three~|~2four~|~2five~|~2six~|~2seven~|~2eight~|~2nine~|~2ten123456
63one~|~3two~|~3three~|~3four~|~3five~|~3six~|~3seven~|~3eight~|~3nine~|~3ten123456

Answer 1

Let's try awk:
awk 'BEGIN{FS="[~|~]+"; OFS="~|~"}
{for(i=10; i<NF; i+=9){
str=$i
$i=substr(str, 1, 9)"\n"substr(str, 10, length(str))
}
print $0}' t.txt
Input:
one~|~two~|~three~|~four~|~five~|~six~|~seven~|~eight~|~nine~|~ten1234562one~|~2‌​two~|~2three~|~2four~|~2five~|~2six~|~2seven~|~2eight~|~2nine~|~2ten1234563one~|~‌​3two~|~3three~|~3four~|~3five~|~3six~|~3seven~|~3eight~|~3nine~|~3ten123456
The output:
one~|~two~|~three~|~four~|~five~|~six~|~seven~|~eight~|~nine~|~ten123456
2one~|~2‌​two~|~2three~|~2four~|~2five~|~2six~|~2seven~|~2eight~|~2nine~|~2ten12345
63one~|~‌​3two~|~3three~|~3four~|~3five~|~3six~|~3seven~|~3eight~|~3nine~|~3ten123456
I assume there some error in your comment: If your input contains ten1234562one and 2ten1234563one, then the line break has to be inserted after 2 in the first case and after 6 in the second case (as this is the tenth character). But your expected output is different to this.

Answer 2

Your sed script wasn't too far off. This seems to do the job you want:
sed -e '/^$/d' \
-e 's/\([^~|]*~|~\)\{9\}.\{9\}/&\' \
-e '/' \
-e 'P;D' \
data
For your input file (I called it data), I get:
one~|~two~|~three~|~four~|~five~|~six~|~seven~|~eight~|~nine~|~ten123456
2one~|~2two~|~2three~|~2four~|~2five~|~2six~|~2seven~|~2eight~|~2nine~|~2ten12345
63one~|~3two~|~3three~|~3four~|~3five~|~3six~|~3seven~|~3eight~|~3nine~|~3ten12345
6
The script requires a little explanation, I fear. It uses some obscure shell and some obscure sed behaviour. The obscure shell behaviour is that within a single-quoted string, backslashes have no special meaning, so the backslash before the second single quote in the second -e appears to sed as a backslash at the end of the argument. The obscure sed behaviour is that it treats the argument for each -e option as if it is a line. So, the trailing backslash plus the / after the third -e is treated as if there was a backslash, newline, slash sequence, which is how BSD sed (and POSIX sed) requires you to add a newline. GNU sed treats \n in the replacement as a newline, but POSIX (and BSD) says:
The escape sequence '\n' shall match a <newline> embedded in the pattern space.
It doesn't say anything about \n being treated as a <newline> in the replacement part of a s/// substitution. So, the first two -e options combine to add a newline after what is matched. What's matched? Well, that's a sequence of 'zero or more non-tilde, non-pipe characters followed by ~|~', repeated 9 times, followed by 9 'any characters'. This is an approximation to what you want. If you had a field such as ~|~tilde~pipe|bother~|~, the regex would fail because of the ~ between 'tilde' and 'pipe' and also because of the | between 'pipe' and 'bother'. Fixing it to handle all possible sequences like that is non-trivial, and not warranted by the sample data.
The remainder of the script is straight-forward: the -e '/^$/d' deletes an empty line, which matters if the data is exactly the right length, and in -e 'P;D' the P prints the initial segment of the pattern space up to the first newline (the one we just added); the D deletes the initial segment of the pattern space up to the first newline and starts over.
I'm not convinced this is worth the complexity. It might be simpler to understand if the script was in a file, script.sed:
/^$/d
s/\([^~|]*~|~\)\{9\}.\{9\}/&\
/
P
D
and the command line was:
$ sed -f script.sed data
one~|~two~|~three~|~four~|~five~|~six~|~seven~|~eight~|~nine~|~ten123456
2one~|~2two~|~2three~|~2four~|~2five~|~2six~|~2seven~|~2eight~|~2nine~|~2ten12345
63one~|~3two~|~3three~|~3four~|~3five~|~3six~|~3seven~|~3eight~|~3nine~|~3ten12345
6
$
Needless to say, it produces the same output. Without the /^$/d, the script only works because of the odd 6 at the end of the input. With exactly 9 characters after the third record, it then flops into in infinite loop.
Using extended regular expressions
If you use extended regular expressions, you can deal with odd-ball fields that contain ~ or | (or, indeed, ~|) in the middle.
script2.sed:
/^$/d
s/(([^~|]{1,}|~[^|]|~\|[^~])*~\|~){9}.{9}/&\
/
P
D
data2:
one~|~two~|~three~|~four~|~five~|~six~|~seven~|~eight~|~nine~|~ten1234562one~|~2two~|~2three~|~2four~|~2five~|~2six~|~2seven~|~2eight~|~2nine~|~2ten1234563one~|~3two~|~3three~|~3four~|~3five~|~3six~|~3seven~|~3eight~|~3nine~|~3ten12345666=beast~tilde|pipe~|twiddle~|~4-two~|~4-three~|~4-four~|~4-five~|~4-six~|~4-seven~|~4-eighty-eight~|~4-999~|~987654321
Output from sed -E -f script.sed data2:
one~|~two~|~three~|~four~|~five~|~six~|~seven~|~eight~|~nine~|~ten123456
2one~|~2two~|~2three~|~2four~|~2five~|~2six~|~2seven~|~2eight~|~2nine~|~2ten12345
63one~|~3two~|~3three~|~3four~|~3five~|~3six~|~3seven~|~3eight~|~3nine~|~3ten12345
666=beast~tilde|pipe~|twiddle~|~4-two~|~4-three~|~4-four~|~4-five~|~4-six~|~4-seven~|~4-eighty-eight~|~4-999~|~987654321
That still won't handle a field like tilde~~|~. Using -E is correct for BSD (Mac OS X) sed; it enables extended regular expressions. The equivalent option for GNU sed is -r.