Shell Programming and Scripting

awk 'NR==FNR{a[NR]=$0}\
  NR!=FNR{if(FNR==1){print $0}else{print $0, a[++x]}}' data excel \
  | sed 's/\s\+/ | /g'

column1 | column2 | column3
server1 | 15-dec-2008 | 15-dec-2009
server2 | 16-dec-2008 | 16-dec-2009

NR==FNR                      as long as reading the first file,
{a[NR]=$0}\                  save every line in an array a,
NR!=FNR{if(FNR==1){print $0} when reading the second file print the first line
else{print $0, a[++x]}}'     else print the whole line and add the content
                             of the array.
sed 's/\s\+/ | /g'           finally replace spaces by " | ". I use sed as i 
                             had not luck trying this in awk