I need to be able to have a script that check alternate fields for alternate names. If the field is not blank than I need to print that field plus the main fields
Example:
record is a "|" delimited with 52 fields.

$1|$2|$3|$4|$5|$6|$7|$8|$9|$10|$11|$12|$13|$14|..........................$41|$42|$43|$44|$45|$46|$47|$48|$49|$50|$51|$52|

out of this record I need print the following which I can with this
gawk -F "|" '{print$3,"|",$29,"|",$27,"|",$25,"|",$18,"|",$19,"|",$21,"|",$22,"|",$41,"|",$43,"|",$45,"|",$47,"|",$49,"|",$51}'<${i}_4444.txt > ${i}_${DELIVERY}.txt

what I also need to do is check to see if $3, $41, $43, $45, $47, $49 and $51 have another name in it.
If they do than I need to print the following
$3,"|",$29,"|",$27,"|",$25,"|",$18,"|",$19,"|",$21,"|",$22
$41,"|",$29,"|",$27,"|",$25,"|",$18,"|",$19,"|",$21,"|",$22
$43,"|",$29,"|",$27,"|",$25,"|",$18,"|",$19,"|",$21,"|",$22
etc. etc..

if they do not have an alternate name continue to check each field and then continue on to the next record.

I am haveing trouble putting this into a unix script--

if you can help I would appreciate it

thanks

It is not clear to me the checks you want to make on $3, $41, etc, but awk should be able to do the test.  Also, if you declare your Output Field Separator as the bar character, that will save you some coding.

Or if you want bar character AND spaces, then use: OFS=" | "

gawk -F\| 'BEGIN {OFS="|"}
{print $3,$29,$27,$25,$18,$19,$21,$22,$41,$43,$45,$47,$49,$51

 if ($3=="whatever")
    print $3,$29,$27,$25,$18,$19,$21,$22

 if ($41=="whatever")
    print $3,$29,$27,$25,$18,$19,$21,$22

 etc etc

}' ${i}_4444.txt > ${i}_${DELIVERY}.txt

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