So I am working on command line and I have a file that is spaced by tabs like:

one countMe
two countMEtoo
three COUNTMEthree

What I want to do is read in that file, and replace the second column contents with the length of the string in that column.

one 7
two 10
three 12

What I wanted to do was use awk to assign a temp variable the length of the string found in the 2nd colum, and then using sed, replace the string in the second column with the length of the string. What I was thinking was:

awk '{$temp = length($2)}' info.tab | sed 's/$2/$temp/g' info.tab > info.new

Howver... my new file is just a complete copy of the first file? I am not sure how to pass variables around. If there are any suggestions on how to fix it, an inherent length counter in sed, or where to look that would be great.

Thanks!

Don't complicate your life for nothing awk can solve your problem.

awk '{$2=length($2)}1' OFS="\t" file

Or simply

awk '{print $1,length($2)}' info.tab

1. Check the OP requirement:
2. Please use [code] tags.

It does work with tabs

awk '{print $1,length($2)}' info.tab

Did you check the output?

# cat file
one     countMe
two     countMEtoo
three   COUNTMEthree
# awk '{print $1,length($2)}' file
one 7
two 10
three 12
# awk '{$2=length($2)}1' OFS="\t" file
one     7
two     10
three   12

It was not specified in the OP if the output should have tabs or not. The output requiered by the poster doesn't show any kind of tabbing.