How to display text file in columns using bashscript in unix? - bash

Question

I am making a bash script contact list system. This is what it prints out.
=================
Menu
=================
Enter 1 for Insert new contact
Enter 2 for Print current contact list
Enter 3 for Search contact list
Enter 4 for Exit
Enter your selection:
For "1" it ask for name, email, and phone and stores them for variables then stores them in a text file.
case "$answer" in
1) echo -e "Enter in a new contact name: \c"
read name
echo -e "Enter in new contact email address: \c"
read email
echo -e "Enter in new contact phone number: \c"
read phone
echo "$name, $email, $phone" >> contacts.txt ;;
For 2 is where I am having trouble. I want to display the text in three columns so I can sort them by name, email, or phone number. This is my code for case 2.
2) cat contacts.txt ;;
Obviously it only spits out:
Test Name, Test#data.com, 123-123-1234
Blank Data, Data#aol.com, 234-555-5555
I want it to read:
Name Email Phone
Test Name Test#data.com 123-123-1234
Blank Data Data#aol.com 234-555-5555
How would I do that? And how would I be able to sort it later on?

Answer 1

Change
echo "$name, $email, $phone" >> contacts.txt ;;
to
echo "$name,$email,$phone" >> contacts.txt ;;
and try this:
(echo Name,Email,Phone; cat contacts.txt) | column -s , -t

Answer 2

$ cat contacts.txt
Test Name, Test#data.com, 123-123-1234
Blank Data, Data#aol.com, 234-555-5555
$ awk -F, 'BEGIN{printf "%-12s %-15s %-12s\n","Name"," Email"," Phone"} {printf "%-12s %-15s %-12s\n",$1,$2,$3}' contacts.txt
Name Email Phone
Test Name Test#data.com 123-123-1234
Blank Data Data#aol.com 234-555-5555
How it works:
The printf statement allows custom formatting of output. Above the format string %-12s %-15s %-12s\n was used. Taking %-12s, for example, the 12s part means that we want to format a string to a width of 12 columns. The minus sign means that we want that field left-justified.
Looking at each piece of the awk code separately:
-F,
This tells awk to use a comma as the field separator on each line.
BEGIN{printf "%-12s %-15s %-12s\n","Name"," Email"," Phone"}
The BEGIN block is executed before the first line of the file is read. It is used here to print the header.
printf "%-12s %-15s %-12s\n",$1,$2,$3
awk implicitly loops through every line in the file. For each line, we print out the first three fields as per the format statement.