replacing fixed strings

[jescat]

I have a question of how to replace a string at a static starting position and length with another string. For example in the following example of text how would I replace "hello" with five spaces.

12hello89

Note hello will always start in position 3 with length 5.

I can get sub or gsub to work because is wants a regexp not a string positons like substr

Anyhelp would be appreciated

 

[CaKiwi]

You could use

s2 = substr(s1,1,2) "     " substr(s1,8)

Hope this is helpful. CaKiwi

 

[vgersh99]

yeah, that's too bad one cannot do sed's anchoring with
s/^\(..\).....\(.*\)$/\1 \2/g

I always wish there was something like that in awk....

vlad