Colunm formating

[Jose Mosquera]

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,

[Massimo Bianchi]

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

[Kent Ostby]

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

[Jose Mosquera]

Thanks Massimo,

I need it in a single sweep.

BR,

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

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.

[Ralph Grothe]

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
$

[Rodney Hills]

use "xargs"-

echo $VAR | xargs -n4 echo

Just specify number of columns on -n parameter.

HTH

-- Rod Hills

[Hein van den Heuvel]

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

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

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...

[Hein van den Heuvel]

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