Shell Programming and Scripting

I have two files, file1 and file2 who have identical number of rows and columns. However, the script is supposed to be used for for different files and I cannot know the format in advance. Also, the number of columns changes within the file, some rows have more and some less columns (they are shaped like an upper triangular matrix).,as below.
file1 :

Code:

11 12 13 14 15
21 22 23 24
31 32 33
41 42
51

file2:

Code:

61 62 63 64 65
71 72 73 74
81 82 83
91 92
101

I need to add the values of the elements in the same row and column of the two files and print them in the corresponding row/column. So I need to get

Code:

72 74 76 78 80
92 94 96 98
112 114 116
132 134
152

I've tried with:

Code:

paste file1 file2 > file3
awk '{for(i=1;i<(NF/2);i++) {x=$i+$(i+NF/2);print x}}' file3

but that is neither adding them up properly nor printing them properly. What would be a way to do add these element considering I'm dealing with large files and variable sizes?

using your approach:

Code:

paste file1 file2 |\
 awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF/2;i++) printf("%s%s", $i+$((NF/2)+i), (i==NF/2)?ORS:OFS)}'

I've now tried this but it also doesn't add up the values properly nor print them in the right format. I suppose my approach isn't the way to go, it was simply the only thing I could think of doing. Is there a better approach to go at it?

strange... given you sample files and the script:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

paste maya1.txt maya2.txt |\
 awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF/2;i++) printf("%s%s", $i+$((NF/2)+i), (i==NF/2)?ORS:OFS)}'

I get the desired result:

Code:

72 74 76 78 80
92 94 96 98
112 114 116
132 134
152

Can you run cat -vet on both files and post the corresponding output within code tags, please.

Yes it does work, sorry, I've typed i<NF/2 instead of i<=NF/2.

May I ask, what does

Code:

(i==NF/2)?ORS:OFS

mean? I assume it means that when i is equal to half of the number of records it goes into newline? How does it exactly do that?

you can think of this as short hand for a long hand mnemonic of:

Code:

if (i==NF/2)
   output ORS
else
   output OFS

Does the fact that I am printing it as string (printf and %s) make any problems with precision or format for later use? The entries in file1 and file2 can be either float or decimal and the precision is very important for the task, so I tried replacing %s with %d or %i to keep the output in the same format but that didn't give the result in a triangular form like it did with %s. Why is that?