UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi everybody.
I have a number of files that i would like to combine. however not concatenating, but rather extract lines from the files.
Example:

File1 ------ File2 ------File3 ...
line11 ---- line21 ---- line31 ...
line12 ---- line22 ---- line32 ...
line13 ---- line23 ---- line33 ...
... ...

and i want to have something like
File1 ----- File2 ------ File3
line11 ---- line12 ---- line13
line21 ---- line22 ---- line23
line31 ---- line32 ---- line33

That means a file containing all the first lines, one for the 2nd lines, one for the 3rd, and so on. Is there an easy way to do this?
Appreciate any help.

This will create lines in files named file0 .., 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, since your example put line 3 13 23 and 33 in file3, I assume you only want lines%10 output filenames

Code:

awk { fname=sprintf("file%d", FNR%10); print $0 >> fname}[list of input files goes here]

Sorry, i think my explanation was unclear. By line13 i meant line3 from file 1

mybe this is clearer:
FileA ------ FileB ------FileC ...
lineA1 ---- lineB1 ---- lineC1 ...
lineA2 ---- lineB2 ---- lineC2 ...
lineA3 ---- lineB3 ---- lineC3 ...
... ...

and i want to have something like
File1 ----- File2 ------ File3
lineA1 ---- lineA2 ---- lineA3
lineB1 ---- lineB2 ---- lineB3
lineC1 ---- lineC2 ---- lineC3

Do I have to replace the division by 10 in the awk command?

Try this with your input file.

Code:

 
#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -lt 3 ]
then
        echo "Please Give positional parameters as filenames"
        echo "Usage : sh <script> <file1> <file2> <file3>"
        exit
else
no_of_lines=` wc -l $1 | cut -d " " -f 1 `
j=1
for((i=1; i<=no_of_lines; i++))
do
        `sed -n "${i}p" $1 > file${j} ; sed -n "${i}p" $2 >> file${j}; sed -n "${i}p" $3  >> file${j} `
        j=`expr $j + 1`
done
fi