awk command to paste 1st columns of 2 files.

UNIX for Beginners Q & A
1

I have 2 files contains more than 5000 lines, I want to paste the 1st column of both file in an output file using awk.
Please suggest to me I had tried paste command but it merges my both column.

--- Post updated at 10:26 PM ---

file1.txt

2020-01-07 235400
2020-01-07 235400
2020-01-07 235401
2020-01-07 235401
2020-01-07 235401
2020-01-07 235401
2020-01-07 235401
2020-01-07 235404
2020-01-07 235404
2020-01-07 235752

file2.txt

ossuser
ossuser
ossuser
ossuser
ossuser
ossuser
ossuser
ossuser
ossuser
ossuser

required output

2020-01-05 020012      ossuser
2020-01-05 020014      ossuser
2020-01-05 020014      ossuser
2020-01-05 020014      ossuser
2020-01-05 020109      ossuser
2020-01-05 020230      ossuser
2020-01-05 020240      ossuser
2020-01-05 020240      ossuser
2020-01-05 020241      ossuser
2020-01-05 020241      ossuser
2020-01-05 020241      ossuser
2020-01-05 020242      ossuser
2020-01-05 020242      ossuser
2020-01-05 020242      ossuser
2020-01-05 020242      ossuser

I am getting merged output like this by using paste

paste file1 file2
2020-01-ossuser00
2020-01-ossuser00
2020-01-ossuser01
2020-01-ossuser01
2020-01-ossuser01
2020-01-ossuser01
2020-01-ossuser01
2020-01-ossuser04
2020-01-ossuser04
2020-01-ossuser52

Please suggest Thanks in Advance

2

Can't reproduce your problem:

paste file[12]
2020-01-07 235400    ossuser
2020-01-07 235400    ossuser
2020-01-07 235401    ossuser
2020-01-07 235401    ossuser
2020-01-07 235401    ossuser
2020-01-07 235401    ossuser
2020-01-07 235401    ossuser
2020-01-07 235404    ossuser
2020-01-07 235404    ossuser
2020-01-07 235752    ossuser

but neither can produce your required output as no e.g. 2020-01-05 020012 is in your input data.
With strange problems like this, I usually presume non-printing control characters in file, like the DOS line terminator <CR> (\r = ^M = 0x0D).

3

Hi,
Actually my file contains approx 3000 lines that's why I am getting this type of output.
Can you please suggest me any other command to get the same output using awk.

4

Definitely not. paste handles 3000 lines (and more!) nicely. The presumed errors in the input files will make awk fail as well. Get those errors corrected, and retry.

5

What do these give you?

grep -n '' file1 | head 
grep -n '' file2 | head

I agree that this is most likely peculiar characters in the data. To see if we can spot something, can you:

head file1 | od -tx
head file2 | od -tx

Please paste the output exactly and wrap it in CODE tags.

Thanks, in advance,
Robin