awk to search a pattern and print lines with pattern and one more condition

Question

I have a input file as shown below:

SR  policy name    state             error code
1   backup01       successful         0
2   backup01       fail               13
3   backup01       fail               58
4   backup02       successful         0
5   backup02       successful         0
6   backup02       successful         0

I want to have an output where if any line for a particular policy (example backup01 has a line with "fail" state, it will only show "fail" state lines and will not show the "success" lines. Similarly where all lines of a policy (example backup02) have a state "successful" it will print all the "successful" state lines.

2   backup01       fail               13
3   backup01       fail               58
4   backup02       successful         0
5   backup02       successful         0
6   backup02       successful         0

I have tried using awk with little success, but not able to get ahead with a final solution.

awk '{if ($4 == 0) {print $0} else if($4 !=0 && $4 == 0) {print $0}}' input_file.txt

any other way using sed or other tool is also fine. ALso header from input file can also be ignored.

Answer 1

I would harness GNU AWK following way, let file.txt content be

SR  policy name    state             error code
1   backup01       successful         0
2   backup01       fail               13
3   backup01       fail               58
4   backup02       successful         0
5   backup02       successful         0
6   backup02       successful         0

then

awk 'NR>1{arr[$2][$3]=arr[$2][$3] RS $0}END{for(i in arr){print substr(arr[i]["fail" in arr[i]?"fail":"successful"],2)}}' file.txt

gives output

2   backup01       fail               13
3   backup01       fail               58
4   backup02       successful         0
5   backup02       successful         0
6   backup02       successful         0

Explanation: for lines beyond 1st I populate 2D array, with first key being policy name and second state, I append whole line using row separator so values are lines separated by newlines. When file is processed I go through said array and print what is under fail if it is is available for given policy name else what is under successful. I start printing at 2nd character due to leading newline which appear due to way I populate array. Disclaimer: this solution assumes you are accepting any order of lines in output, if this does not hold do not use it.

(tested in GNU Awk 5.1.0)