topic Re: Colunm formating in Operating System - HP-UX

Colunm formating

Jose Mosquera — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 11:39:00 GMT

Hi pals,

Pls a *easier* way to echo a $VAR content in n colummns, i.e:

VAR="01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11"
I need echo $VAR up to four columns format:
01 02 03 04
05 06 07 08
09 10 11

BR,

Re: Colunm formating

Massimo Bianchi — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 11:47:23 GMT

use "cut"

$ echo $VAR
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
$ echo $VAR | cut -f 1-3 -d\ 1-3
1 2 3

repeat "cut" as necessary to obtain the desidered output.

HTH,
Massimo

Re: Colunm formating

Kent Ostby — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 11:52:18 GMT

In your shell file put in a line that says:

echo $VAR | awk -f useme.awk

Create a file called useme.awk which contains a SINGLE LINE (you may have to join lines after you cut and paste) that has this in it:

{for (idx1=1;idx1<=NF;idx1++) { printf ("%3s",$idx1); if ((idx1%4==0)||(idx1==NF
)) {printf ("\n");} } }

Note, the "3s" is making columns three spaces wide. If you want it to just have the columns be the width of your data then take out the "3". If you want the data columns wider then change the "3" to whatever width column you want.

Best regards,

Kent M. Ostby

Re: Colunm formating

Jose Mosquera — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 11:52:36 GMT

Thanks Massimo,

I need it in a single sweep.

BR,

Re: Colunm formating

A. Clay Stephenson — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 12:01:32 GMT

Here's one pure shell method:

#!/usr/bin/sh

VAR="01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11"
set ${VAR}
while [[ ${#} -gt 0 ]]
do
typeset -i10 KNT=0
while [[ ${KNT} -lt 4 && ${#} -gt 0 ]]
do
echo "${1}\t\c"
shift
((KNT += 1))
done
echo
done

You probably would want to make a function out of this to call it with multiple variables.

Re: Colunm formating

Ralph Grothe — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 12:17:49 GMT

strange that no one has mentioned good old fold yet?

e.g.

suppose you have only two digit wide columns,
how about something like this

$ var="12 43 28 29 23 21 38 21 93 21 29 29 39 29"
$ echo $var|fold -w 12
12 43 28 29
23 21 38 21
93 21 29 29
39 29
$

Re: Colunm formating

Rodney Hills — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 12:41:09 GMT

use "xargs"-

echo $VAR | xargs -n4 echo

Just specify number of columns on -n parameter.

HTH

-- Rod Hills

Re: Colunm formating

Hein van den Heuvel — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 03:14:36 GMT

Here is a pretty silly solution in perl.

perl -e '$_=$ENV{"var"}; s/(\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+)\s+/$1\n/g; print "$_\n"'

or similar to the awk solution is:

echo $var | perl -e 'foreach $w (split(/ /,<>)){$s=(++$i % 4)?" ":"\n"; print "$w$s"}'

Or...

export $var
perl -e 'foreach $w (split (/ /,$ENV{"var"})) {$s=(++$i % 4)?" ":"\n"; print "$w$s"}'

I tried it in sed, but inserting a newline is too ugly for my taste for lack of a \n.
You have to use multiple lines. Some like

echo $var | sed -e "s/ /\\
/4" -e "s/ /\\
/7" -e "s/ /\\
/10"

Or very ugly with a post-translated helper character "q":

echo $var | sed -e "s/ /q/4" -e "s/ /q/7" -e "s/ /q/10" | tr q \\012

Re: Colunm formating

Elmar P. Kolkman — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 03:29:07 GMT

Better way with sed:
print $(echo $VAR | sed 's|$[^ ]* [^ ]* [^ ]* [^ ]*$ |\1\\n|g')

The sed command will replace every fourth space to '\n' which will be interpretted by print as a newline...

Re: Colunm formating

Hein van den Heuvel — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 10:10:19 GMT

Thanks! I now see how I can get a substituted 'normal' "\n" to turn into a newline throug print. Cheers, Hein.