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Full Discussion: Read a tab separated file with empty column
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Read a tab separated file with empty column Post 302904753 by maturix on Friday 6th of June 2014 08:39:39 AM
Old 06-06-2014
Read a tab separated file with empty column
Hi all,

I'm trying to read a tab separated file and apply some functions on each column. I have an issue with empty column.

Exemple:
Code:
$ #cat with the sed to allow you to see my tab
$ cat foo.txt| sed 's/\t/;/g' 
a;1;x
b;;y

I wanted to something like that:
Code:
while read col1 col2 col3
do
 function1($col1)
 function2($col2)
 function3($col3)
done < foo.txt

This don't work as the second line has a empty column and so the "e" will be in $col2 instead of $col3.

The only solution I find is to do
Code:
sed -i 's/\t/;/g' foo.txt
IFS=';'
while read col1 col2 col3
do
 function1($col1)
 function2($col2)
 function3($col3)
done < foo.txt
sed -i 's/;/\t/g' foo.txt
IFS=' \t\n'

Is there any other cleaner and faster solution ?

Thanks for your help.
 

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LEARN ABOUT V7

pr

PR(1)							      General Commands Manual							     PR(1)

NAME

       pr  -  print file

SYNOPSIS

       pr [ option ] ...  [ file ] ...

DESCRIPTION

       Pr  produces a printed listing of one or more files.  The output is separated into pages headed by a date, the name of the file or a speci-
       fied header, and the page number.  If there are no file arguments, pr prints its standard input.

       Options apply to all following files but may be reset between files:

       -n     Produce n-column output.

       +n     Begin printing with page n.

       -h     Take the next argument as a page header.

       -wn    For purposes of multi-column output, take the width of the page to be n characters instead of the default 72.

       -ln    Take the length of the page to be n lines instead of the default 66.

       -t     Do not print the 5-line header or the 5-line trailer normally supplied for each page.

       -sc    Separate columns by the single character c instead of by the appropriate amount of white space.  A missing c is taken to be a tab.

       -m     Print all files simultaneously, each in one column,

       Inter-terminal messages via write(1) are forbidden during a pr.

FILES

       /dev/tty?  to suspend messages.

SEE ALSO

       cat(1)

DIAGNOSTICS

       There are no diagnostics when pr is printing on a terminal.

																	     PR(1)
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