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Full Discussion: Problem with a tab separated file
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Problem with a tab separated file Post 302651937 by gary_w on Wednesday 6th of June 2012 11:06:40 AM
Old 06-06-2012
Your "\t"'s are causing the output to *display* with the tabs expanded and replaced with space characters. You need an actual tab character instead.
Code:
awk -F"\t" '{print $5"\t"$4"\t"$2"\t"$1}' infile.dat > outfile.dat

Delete the "\t"'s in the print command and instead, inside the double-quotes type <CTRL-V><CTRL-I> to insert an actual tab character. In vi use the ":set list" command to show you the tab characters as a "^I" and end-of-line as a "$".

Code:
awk '{print $5"^I"$4"^I"$2"^I"$1}' xx.dat$

Output redirected to a file, viewed in vi with :set list looks like this:
Code:
COUNTRY^IPOSTAL^ICITY^IADDRESS1$

Now any program expecting a tab-delimited file will see the actual tab characters and parse correctly.
 

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LEARN ABOUT CENTOS

xmtablistinserttabs

XmTabListInsertTabs(library call)										 XmTabListInsertTabs(library call)

NAME

       XmTabListInsertTabs -- A convenience function that inserts tabs into a tab list

SYNOPSIS

       #include <Xm/Xm.h>
       XmTabList XmTabListInsertTabs(
       XmTabList oldlist,
       XmTab *tabs,
       Cardinal tab_count,
       int position);

DESCRIPTION

       XmTabListInsertTabs  creates  a	new tab list that includes the tabs in oldlist. This function copies specified tabs to the tab list at the
       given position. The first tab_count tabs of the tabs array are added to the tab list. If oldlist is NULL, XmTabListInsertTabs creates a new
       tab list containing only the tabs specified.

       oldlist	 Specifies the tab list to add the tabs to.  The function deallocates oldlist after extracting the required information.

       tabs	 Specifies a pointer to the tabs to be added to the tab list.  It is the caller's responsibility to free the tabs in tabs by using
		 XmTabFree.

       tab_count Specifies the number of tabs in tabs.

       position  Specifies the position of the first new tab in the tab list. A value of 0 (zero) makes the first new tab the first tab in the tab
		 list,	a  value of 1 makes it the second tab, and so on. If position is greater than the number of tabs in oldlist, then the tabs
		 will be inserted at the end. If position is negative, the count will be backwards from the end. A value of -1 makes the first new
		 tab the last tab, and so on.

RETURN

       If  tabs  is  NULL  or  tab_count is 0 (zero), this function returns oldlist. Otherwise, it returns a new tab list.  The function allocates
       space to hold the returned tab list.  The application is responsible for managing the allocated space.  The  application  can  recover  the
       allocated space by calling XmTabListFree.

RELATED

       XmTabList(3) and XmTabListFree(3).

														 XmTabListInsertTabs(library call)
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