swap the last 2 fields

[sathis kumar]

Hello,

I need to swap the last 2 fields in every line.
Input File :
B L1983A B1N 20090701 A QBL1
B L1985A 20090701 A QBL1

Output File should be:
B L1983A B1N 20090701 QBL1 A
B L1985A 20090701 QBL1 A

Could somebody let me know if this can be done using awk?

Thanks & Regards,
Sathis Kumar.B

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Sathis:

# awk '{X=$NF;Y=$(NF-1);$(NF-1)=X;$NF=Y;print}' file

Regards!

...JRF...

[Mel Burslan]

cat my file | while read line; do
echo $line|awk {'print $1" "$2" "$3" "$5" "$4'}
done

provided all lines have exactly 5 fields.

[VK2COT]

Hello,

Of course it can be done.

You need to use for loop:

awk '{for (i=1; i<=NF-2; ++i) printf "%s ", $i; print $(NF), $(NF-1)}' filename

This worked fine on my Linux server at home.

Cheers,

VK2COT

[Ganesan R]

Hi,

There are more than a way always. If the line lenths(field) are varied use this for loop. Assuming the file name is /tmp/test.txt

for A in `cat /tmp/test.txt`
do
echo $A | awk '{tmp = $NF; $NF = $(NF-1); $(NF-1) = tmp; print }' >> /tmp/test1.txt
done

Now you have the desired output in /tmp/test1.txt

[OldSchool]

Mel B said:
cat my file | while read line; do
echo $line|awk {'print $1" "$2" "$3" "$5" "$4'}
done


you can eliminate the cat, while loop and echo. simply

awk '{print $1" "$2" "$3" "$5" "$4'} old_file > new_file

lets awk do the read and it will loop for every line in the original file

[OldSchool]

I should have noted the same for Ganesan's. it simplifies to:

awk '{tmp = $NF; $NF = $(NF-1); $(NF-1) = tmp; print }' /tmp.test >> /tmp/test1.txt