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Printing in columns

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# 1  
Old 05-15-2012
Printing in columns
is there a short one-liner that can print out in columns instead of a long list?

as in, instead of:

Code:
apples
oranges
cats
dogs
sky
monkey
giraffe
cups
spoons
tv
cable

it'll print something like this (properly indented of course Smilie ):

Code:
apples       cats       sky          giraffe   cups       tv
oranges      dogs     monkey     cups     spoons     cable

Shell: bash
OS: linux and sunos
# 2  
Old 05-15-2012
Hi

Not sure whether this is a good way of doing this:


Code:
$ awk 'NR%2{x=x?x"\t"$0:$0;next}{y=y?y"\t"$0:$0;}END{print x"\n"y;}' file
apples  cats    sky     giraffe spoons  cable
oranges dogs    monkey  cups    tv

Guru
# 3  
Old 05-15-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by guruprasadpr
Hi

Not sure whether this is a good way of doing this:


Code:
$ awk 'NR%2{x=x?x"\t"$0:$0;next}{y=y?y"\t"$0:$0;}END{print x"\n"y;}' file
apples  cats    sky     giraffe spoons  cable
oranges dogs    monkey  cups    tv

Guru
tried this. didn't work. it jumbles it up. some are properly aligned and others are just all meshed together. Smilie
# 4  
Old 05-15-2012
Hi.

Perhaps:
Code:
SYNOPSIS
     column [-ntx] [-c columns] [-s sep] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     The column utility formats its input into multiple columns.

...

as in:
Code:
% column -c60 data3
apples	cats	sky	giraffe	spoons	cable
oranges	dogs	monkey	cups	tv

The tab separator may look like oranges and dogs are together, but they have whitespace between them on my terminal.

You can jiggle it with expand:
Code:
% column -c60 data3|expand -10
apples    cats      sky       giraffe   spoons    cable
oranges   dogs      monkey    cups      tv

Best wishes ... cheers, drl
Last edited by drl; 05-15-2012 at 11:00 AM..
This User Gave Thanks to drl For This Post:
SkySmart
# 5  
Old 05-15-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by drl
Hi.

Perhaps:
Code:
SYNOPSIS
     column [-ntx] [-c columns] [-s sep] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     The column utility formats its input into multiple columns.

...

Best wishes ... cheers, drl

thank you! this works.

works like this:
Code:
your command | column

very very simple!
# 6  
Old 05-15-2012
Note: column is not generally available on unix systems...
Last edited by Scrutinizer; 05-15-2012 at 11:09 AM..
# 7  
Old 05-15-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by SkySmart
tried this. didn't work. it jumbles it up. some are properly aligned and others are just all meshed together. Smilie
try with nawk
or try this
Code:
# nawk 'NR%2{if(x)x=x"\t"$0;else x=$0;next}{if(y)y=y"\t"$0;else y=$0}END{print x"\n"y}' infile
apples  cats    sky     giraffe spoons  cable
oranges dogs    monkey  cups    tv
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