UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have two files file1 and file2 as shown below:
file1:
name
nameabc
bcd
nameabcdefg


file2:
age
age1111
age2345
age6743

I have pasted one file on the other with the delimiter "|" and the resulttant file is:
name|age
nameabc|age1111
bcd|age2345
nameabcdefg|age6743

but I want it to be formatted like this:
name |age
nameabc |age1111
bcd |age2345
nameabcdefg |age6743

I tried it with "\t" but since the length of name can vary the number of tabs is not constant. Can anybody give a solution to this?

I assume thats an in-place file editing

if so,

Code:

%s/|/ |/g

replacing "|" to " |" < space and a pipe >

Hi what u suggested I have tried that already but the thing is I want to position them the parameters one below the other something like shown below

name\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|age
nameabc\t\t\t\t\t|age1111
bcd\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|age2345
nameabcdefg\t\t\t|age6743

Can you post your command or program here, so that we could give some idea. ?

file1:
name
nameabc
bcd
nameabcdefg


file2:
age
age1111
age2345
age6743

Above given are my two files. I have issued a command like

echo "`paste -d'|' file1 file2`" > file3

I am getting file3 as:
name|age
nameabc|age1111
bcd|age2345
nameabcdefg|age6743

whereas I want the values to start from a single column. Something like

file3:
name\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|age
nameabc\t\t\t\t\t|age1111
bcd\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|age2345
nameabcdefg\t\t\t|ge6743

All of the data in red should start from a fixed column!

Can anybody help me with my query?

Create a awk file called neatcols with the following contents

{
printf "%-20s %s\n", \
$1, substr($0, index($0,$2))
}

then run it in

awk -f neatcols file3 > file4