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Find number of columns in a file

 
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# 1  
Old 08-14-2006
Find number of columns in a file
Hi all,
may seem a very stupid question.but me stuck up in it for long....


How to find the number of columns in a ASCII file.
EX:-Demo.lst
songs 1 34 45 67

Number of columns should be 5.


Regards,
Anindya
Smilie
# 2  
Old 08-14-2006
Power
Dear Rahul,

check the man page on awk. there you will know about the NF variable, which will give you the number of fields. You can do a
cat file | awk '{ print NF}'




regards
Apoorva Kumar
This User Gave Thanks to apoorvasharma80 For This Post:
ds_biswas
# 3  
Old 08-14-2006
MySQL Thanx a zillion.
It was exactly what i was looking for.

Regards,
Rhaul26 Smilie
This User Gave Thanks to rahul26 For This Post:
ds_biswas
# 4  
Old 05-20-2008
hiii
hey this didnt worked for me...
help how to exactly find the number of columns
waiting for reply
# 5  
Old 05-20-2008
can you elaborate the error you are getting?

thanks
apoorva
# 6  
Old 05-20-2008
error is
error
awk: usage:awk[-Fc] [-f source | 'cmds'] [files]

wht exactly it means...
# 7  
Old 05-20-2008
solution
hey you need to use the field separator if is doesnt work in normal way.

eg.

file1:
a, b, c, d, 1, 2, man, fruit

here use:

cat file1 | awk 'BEGIN{FS=","};{print NF}'

and you will get the output as:
8
 
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