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Insert empty columns in a flat file

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# 1  
Old 03-11-2013
Insert empty columns in a flat file
Hi,

I have a tab delimited flat file, for example shown below
Code:
Name    Desg    Loc
a    b    c
d    e    f

I want to insert an empty column inbetween the column Desc and Loc, the result should be like shown below:

Code:
Name    LName    Desg    Loc
a                b      c
d                e      f

Can anybody please help.

Thanks
Last edited by sampoorna; 03-11-2013 at 04:15 AM.. Reason: column pos correction
# 2  
Old 03-11-2013
Code:
$ awk  -v OFS="\t" ' {NR==1?$2="LName\t"$2:$2="\t"$2 } 1 ' file
Name    LName   Desg    Loc
a               b       c
d               e       f

# 3  
Old 03-11-2013
thanks, can u plz explain the command
# 4  
Old 03-11-2013
OFS="\t" Set Output Field Separator to tab

NR==1?$2="LName\t"$2:$2="\t"$2 If it is first line(NR==1) then append "LName\t" to second field else append tab("\t") to second field

1 means true and print the current row
# 5  
Old 03-11-2013
thank you very much.. Smilie
# 6  
Old 03-11-2013
Code:
perl -pe 'if ($_ =~ "^Name")
{ s/^(\w+)(.*)/$1\tLname$2/g}
else
{s/^(\w+)(.*)/$1\t$2/g;}
' test

# 7  
Old 03-11-2013
Here is another possible way:
Code:
sed "s!\t!\tLName\t!" input.txt > temp1.x
sed "2,$ s!\tLName!\t!" temp1.x > output.txt

On one line:
Code:
sed "s!\t!\tLName\t!; 2,$ s!\tLName!\t!" input.txt

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