Shell Programming and Scripting

RedHat

Linux 2.6.18-92.1.22.el5 #1 SMP Fri Dec 5 09:29:46 EST 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Here is the O/S and I am using a bash shell.

I tried what you are speaking of and i still get the same result. It is ignoring the first file and only outputting the second file. example below\

[67807 loc]$ paste -d ' ' temp113-lat.txt temp113-lon.txt > 113latlon2.txt
[67807 loc]$ cat 113latlon2.txt
5105.471900
5105.626300
5104.146495
5104.146495
5104.146495
5103.428400
5103.305700
5103.446300

[67807 loc]$ paste -d " " temp113-lat.txt temp113-lon.txt > 113latlon4.txt
[67807 loc]$ cat 113latlon4.txt
5105.471900
5105.626300
5104.146495
5104.146495
5104.146495
5103.428400
5103.305700

I am still getting the leading space as the delimiter but it is not reading the first file. but if I do it this way....

[67807 loc]$ paste temp113-lat.txt temp113-lon.txt > 113latlon5
[67807 loc]$ cat 113latlon5
2645.0805105.471900
2644.5485105.626300
2643.7325104.146495
2643.7325104.146495
2643.7325104.146495
2644.9895103.428400
2645.7915103.305700
2647.3585103.446300

I get both files and some of the first has been cut off. So I know it can read the file it just does not want to do it how I want. I am about to let this go and look for a work around on this problem. Is there any other way of doing this?

Thanks also to everyone who has posted help for this issue I appreciate such hospitality from the Unix.com community.

ok.... totally different approach since paste is causing you so much trouble:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

len_a=$( wc -l < a )
len_b=$( wc -l < b )

if [ $len_a -gt $len_b ]; then
  max=$len_b
else
  max=$len_a
fi

(
head -n $max a
head -n $max b
) | pr -l$max -2

maybe cj can help make this POSIX compliant.