Your script should sum the amount paid by check and by debit separately. Do this by testing if field 1 is empty (debit) or has numbers in it (check).

Use an associative array to sum expenses on each catagory type. Use field 3, the expense catagory, as the key to select the array element and use field 5, the amount to be accumulated.

Also, provide a summery of monthly totals by testing field 2 for the month. The month is the middle 2 digits of field2, so -01- is January, -02- is February, etc. You may use either an associative or indexed array. But when you print out report, give month name.

See below about using substr and sprintf to cut just the month out of the date field and convert the string to a number.

Most if not all of the output will be done after all data is processed, so most of the print statements will appear in a END actoin block.

Tricks :

Use split to create an array of month names. If you do them in chronological order, they will be indexed in that order.

Use substr to parse out the "2 digit" month number. This will yield 01, 02, etc. which are strings and not nubmers whch is not exactly correct but close. If you cut carefully, you should get just the 2 digits.

Use sprintf to convert the convert the string number to a real number. sprintf works like printf except the output can be assigned to a variable rather than going to the screen.

num = sprintf( "%d", strnum );

If you take the substring you cut from the date field and run it through sprintf, you will get a real number which can be used to index the monthly cost accumulation.

You can now use a straight index from 1 to 12 to get both the month's name from the month name array and the costs for that month from the monthly cost array with the same index.

What your output should look like. Make it look nice, but you can change titles and spacing if you want.

Checks and debits
Checks :          9478.67
Debits :          9867.22

Expenses by catagory
Insurance         3285.00
Auto               219.23
Utility           5189.52
Health             455.02
Food              7492.91
Gas                110.27
Books              170.90
Computer            37.24
Utiity             157.76
Home              2228.04

Expenses by month
January           2749.11
February          1387.66
March             2054.58
April             1409.43
May               1269.69
June              2413.25
July              2091.96
August            2303.77
September         1269.73
October           1110.81
November          1085.27
December           200.63

If you want to try sorting the catagory section, feel free to do so. The class lecture section on predefine variables has an example on using asorti to work with an associative array's keys in ASCII order.