UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

So I have this issue. I have 4 files. the first one is the master file who has all possible combinations:

file 1

Code:

-      a
-      b
-      c
-      d
-      e

the other three have some of the letters and a number instead of - for example

file 2

Code:

34   a
5     c

file 3

Code:

10   b
12   c

what I want to do is to create a new file that uses the file 1, searches the other file(s) and creates the following table

Code:

a    -     34 
b    -       0 
c    -       5 
d    -       0 
e    -       0

if file 2 has the letter it should spit out the number
if file 2 does not have the letter it should spit out zero "0"

I thought I could do it with awk but I'm just struggling here. This is the command I'm trying to use

Code:

awk 'NR==FNR{a[$2];next} {if ($2 in a) print a[$2],$1; else print a[$2],"0"}' sample1.txt sample2.txt  > new.txt

This should be to compare two samples but it doesn't work so I need to figure out what am I doing wrong. Also I'm not sure if I can implement the third file in there.

Please use code tags as required by forum rules!

Why does b have a 0 in your output when it has a 10 in file2? Which value should accompany c ?

However, try

Code:

awk 'NR==FNR{a[$2];next} $2 in a { print $2, "-", $1; delete a[$2]} END {for (i in a) print i, "-", 0}' file[1-3]
a - 34
c - 5
b - 10
d - 0
e - 0

I apologize for not reading the posting rules first... I will do that for my next thread.

b has 0 for file 2. if we use on the script all files then the table should look like this

Code:

a  34   0
b    0  10
c    5   12
d   0     0
e    0    0

so it makes a new column for each additional file.

BTW thank you for the fast reply!

Try:

Code:

awk '
  FNR==1{
    c++
  }
  {
    A[$2]
    C[$2,c]=$1
  }
  END {
    for(i in A) {
      $1=i
      for(j=2; j<=c; j++)
        $j=C[i,j]+0
      print
    }
  }
' file1 file2 file3 | sort