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I have a directory with many files in it and want to edit each file to only contain a select few columns.
I have the following code which will only print the first column
for i in /directory_path/*.txt; do awk -F "\t" '{ print $1 }' "$i"; done
but if I try to edit each file by adding >'$I' as below then I lose all the information in my files
for i in /directory_path/*.txt; do awk -F "\t" '{ print $1 }' "$i" > "$i"; done
However I want to be able to remove all but a select few columns in each file for example 1 and 3.
Given:
cat file
1 2 3
4 5 6
You can do in place editing with sed:
sed -i.bak -E 's/^([^[:space:]]*).*/\1/' file
cat file
1
4
If you want freedom to work with multiple columns and have in place editing, use GNU awk that also supports in place editing:
gawk -i inplace '{print $1, $3}' file
cat file
1 3
4 6
If you only have POSIX awk or wanted to use cut you generally do this:
Modify the file with awk, cut, sed, etc
Redirect the output to a temp file
Rename the temp file back to the original file name.
Like so:
awk '{print $1, $3}' file >tmp_file; mv tmp_file file
Or with cut:
cut -d ' ' -f 1,3 file >tmp_file; mv tmp_file file
To do a loop on files in a directory, you would do:
for fn in /directory_path/*.txt; do
awk -F '\t' '{ print $1 }' "$fn" >tmp_file
mv tmp_file "$fn"
done
Just to add a little more to #dawg's perfectly well working answer according to my use case.
I was dealing with CSVs, and standard CSV can have , in some values as long as it's in double quotes like for example, the below-mentioned row will be a valid CSV row.
col1,col2,col2
1,abc,"abc, inc"
But the command above was treating the , between the double quotes as delimiter too.
Also, the output file delimiter wasn't specified in the command.
These are the modifications I had to make for it handle the above two problems:
for fn in /home/ubuntu/dir/*.csv; do
awk -F ',' '{ FPAT = "([^,]*)|(\"[^\"]+\")"; OFS=","; print $1,$2 }' "$fn" >tmp_file
mv tmp_file "$fn"
done
The OSF delimiter will be the diameter of the output/result file.
The FPAT handles the case of , between quotation mark.
The regex and the information for that is mentioned ins awk's official documentation in section 4.7 Defining Fields by Content.
I was led to that solution through this answer.
I have multiple text files each containing two columns and I would like to duplicate the first column in each file in bash to have three columns in the end.
File:
sP100227 1
sP100267 1
sP100291 1
sP100493 1
Output file:
sP100227 sP100227 1
sP100267 sP100267 1
sP100291 sP100291 1
sP100493 sP100493 1
I tried:
txt=path/to/*.txt
echo "$(paste <(cut -f1-2 $txt) > "$txt"
Could you please try following. Written and tested with shown samples in GNU awk. This will add fields to only those lines which have 2 fields in it.
awk 'NF==2{$1=$1 OFS $1} 1' Input_file
In case you don't care of number of fields and simply want to have value of 1st field 2 times then try following.
awk '{$1=$1 OFS $1} 1' Input_file
OR if you only have 2 fields in your Input_file then we need not to rewrite the complete line we could simply print them as follows.
awk '{print $1,$1,$2}' Input_file
To save output into same Input_file itself append > temp && mv temp Input_file for above solutions(after testing).
Use a temp file, with cut -f1 and paste, like so:
paste <(cut -f1 in_file) in_file > tmp_file
mv tmp_file in_file
Alternatively, use a Perl one-liner, like so:
perl -i.bak -lane 'print join "\t", $F[0], $_;' in_file
The Perl one-liner uses these command line flags:
-e : Tells Perl to look for code in-line, instead of in a file.
-n : Loop over the input one line at a time, assigning it to $_ by default.
-l : Strip the input line separator ("\n" on *NIX by default) before executing the code in-line, and append it when printing.
-a : Split $_ into array #F on whitespace or on the regex specified in -F option.
-i.bak : Edit input files in-place (overwrite the input file). Before overwriting, save a backup copy of the original file by appending to its name the extension .bak.
SEE ALSO:
perldoc perlrun: how to execute the Perl interpreter: command line switches
The default delimiter in cut and paste is TAB, but your file looks to be space-separated.
You can't use the same file as input and output redirection, because when the shell opens the file for output it truncates it, so there's nothing for the program to read. Write to a new file and then rename it.
Your paste command is only being given one input file. And there's no need to use echo.
paste -d' ' <(cut -d' ' -f1 "$txt") "$txt" > "$txt.new" && mv "$txt.new" "$txt"
You can do this more easily using awk.
awk '{print $1, $0}' "$txt" > "$txt.new" && mv "$txt.new" "$txt"
GNU awk has an in-place extension, so you can use that if you like. See Save modifications in place with awk
Try sed -Ei 's/\s*(\S+)\s+/\1 \1 /1' $txt if your fields are separated by strings of one or more whitespace characters. This used the Stream Editor (sed) replaces (s///1) the first string of non-space characters (\S+) followed by a string of whitespace characters (\s+) with the same thing repeated with intervening spaces(\1 \1 ). It keeps the rest of the line. The -E to sed means use extended pattern matching (+, ( vs. \(). The -i means do it in-place, replacing the file with the output.
You could use awk and do awk '{ printf "%s %s\n",$1,$0 }'. This takes the first whitespace-delimited field ($1) and follows it with a space and the whole line ($0) followed by a newline. This is a little clearer than sed but it doesn't have the advantage of being in-place.
If you can guarantee they are delimited by only one space, with no leading spaces, you can use paste -d' ' <(cut -d' ' -f1 ${txt}) ${txt} > ${txt}.new; mv ${txt}.new ${txt}. The -d' ' sets the delimiter to space for both cut and paste. You know this but for others -f1 means extract the first -d-delimited field. The mv command replaces the input with the output.
I need to merge a single column from multiple CSV files whilst disregarding the headers.
file 1:
id,backer_uid,fname,lname
123,uj2uj2,JOHN,SMITH
file 2:
id,backer_uid,fname,lname
124,uj2uh3,BRIAN,DOOLEY
Output:
JOHN
BRIAN
Currently, I am using:
/*Merge 3rd column from all csv files*/
awk -F "\"*,\"*" '{print $3}’ *.csv >merged.csv
But how do I ignore the headers?
You can do it with awk, nearly as you have already done, by adding a condition on the FNR (the record number per file):
awk -F, 'FNR > 1 {print $3}' *.csv > merged.csv
Use tail and cut:
tail -q -n +2 *.csv | cut -f3 -d, > merged.csv
tail -n +2 prints all lines of files starting from line number 2
-q suppresses printing of file names
cut -f3 -d, extracts the third field, treating , as the delimiter
try: If you have to read only 2 files.
awk -F, 'FNR>1{print $(NF-1)}' file[12]
Here I am making field separator as comma and then checking if line number is greater than 1 then printing the second last field. Point to be noted here is file[12] will only read files named file1 and file2, if you have more than that files use file* then.
I trying to copy 3 columns from one text file and paste them into a new text file. However, whenever I execute this script, all of the columns in the original text file get copied. Here is the code I used:
cut -f 1,2,6 PROFILES.1.0.profile > compiledfile.txt
paste compiledfile.txt > myNewFile
Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong? Also, is there a simpler way to do this? Thanks!
Let's suppose that the input is comma-separated:
$ cat File
1,2,3,4,5,6,7
a,b,c,d,e,f,g
We can extract columns 1, 2, and 6 using cut:
$ cut -d, -f 1,2,6 File
1,2,6
a,b,f
Note the use of option -d, to specify that the column separator is a comma.
By default, cut uses a tab as the column separator. If the separator in your file is anything else, you must use the -d option.
Using awk
awk -vFS=your_delimiter_here -vOFS=your_delimiter_here 'print $1,$2,$6' PROFILES.1.0.profile > compiledfile.txt
should do it.
For comma separated fields the solution would be
awk -vFS=, -vOFS=, '{print $1,$2,$6}' PROFILES.1.0.profile > compiledfile.txt
FS is an awk builtin variable which stands for field-separator.
Similarly OFS stands for output-field-separator.
And the handy -v option with awk helps you assign a value to variable.
You could use awk to this.
awk -F "delimiter" '
{
print $1,$2 ,$3 #Where $1,$2 and so are column numbers
}' filename > newfile
Say I have file - a.csv
ram,33,professional,doc
shaym,23,salaried,eng
Now I need this output (pls dont ask me why)
ram,doc,doc,
shayam,eng,eng,
I am using cut command
cut -d',' -f1,4,4 a.csv
But the output remains
ram,doc
shyam,eng
That means cut can only print a Field just one time. I need to print the same field twice or n times.
Why do I need this ? (Optional to read)
Ah. It's a long story. I have a file like this
#,#,-,-
#,#,#,#,#,#,#,-
#,#,#,-
I have to covert this to
#,#,-,-,-,-,-
#,#,#,#,#,#,#,-
#,#,#,-,-,-,-
Here each '#' and '-' refers to different numerical data. Thanks.
You can't print the same field twice. cut prints a selection of fields (or characters or bytes) in order. See Combining 2 different cut outputs in a single command? and Reorder fields/characters with cut command for some very similar requests.
The right tool to use here is awk, if your CSV doesn't have quotes around fields.
awk -F , -v OFS=, '{print $1, $4, $4}'
If you don't want to use awk (why? what strange system has cut and sed but no awk?), you can use sed (still assuming that your CSV doesn't have quotes around fields). Match the first four comma-separated fields and select the ones you want in the order you want.
sed -e 's/^\([^,]*\),\([^,]*\),\([^,]*\),\([^,]*\)/\1,\4,\4/'
$ sed 's/,.*,/,/; s/\(,.*\)/\1\1,/' a.csv
ram,doc,doc,
shaym,eng,eng,
What this does:
Replace everything between the first and last comma with just a comma
Repeat the last ",something" part and tack on a comma. Voilà!
Assumptions made:
You want the first field, then twice the last field
No escaped commas within the first and last fields
Why do you need exactly this output? :-)
using perl:
perl -F, -ane 'chomp($F[3]);$a=$F[0].",".$F[3].",".$F[3];print $a."\n"' your_file
using sed:
sed 's/\([^,]*\),.*,\(.*\)/\1,\2,\2/g' your_file
As others have noted, cut doesn't support field repetition.
You can combine cut and sed, for example if the repeated element is at the end:
< a.csv cut -d, -f1,4 | sed 's/,[^,]*$/&&,/'
Output:
ram,doc,doc,
shaym,eng,eng,
Edit
To make the repetition variable, you could do something like this (assuming you have coreutils available):
n=10
rep=$(seq $n | sed 's:.*:\&:' | tr -d '\n')
< a.csv cut -d, -f1,4 | sed 's/,[^,]*$/'"$rep"',/'
Output:
ram,doc,doc,doc,doc,doc,doc,doc,doc,doc,doc,
shaym,eng,eng,eng,eng,eng,eng,eng,eng,eng,eng,
I had the same problem, but instead of adding all the columns to awk, I just used (to duplicate the 2nd column):
awk -v OFS='\t' '$2=$2"\t"$2' # for tab-delimited files
For CSVs you can just use
awk -F , -v OFS=, '$2=$2","$2'