Extracting columns from multiple files with awk

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

hi everyone!

I'd like to extract a single column from 5 different files and put them together in an output file. I saw a similar question for 2 input files, and the line of code workd very well, the code is:

awk 'NR==FNR{a[NR]=$2; next} {print a[FNR], $2}' file1 file2

I added the file3, file4 and file5 at the end, but it doesn't work. Does anyone know what do I have to do?

Thanks in advance.
Joc

2

u can make use of cut command like

cut -f3 file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt file4.txt
3

Will be the same column from each file?

4

yes, the same column

---------- Post updated at 09:40 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:33 AM ----------

This works but it puts one column below the other... is it possible to put them side by side?
thanks

5

with the help of cut and paste you can get the result

$cut -f3 file7.txt >temp1.txt
$cut -f3 file8.txt >temp2.txt
$paste temp1.txt temp2.txt >file.txt
1 Like
6

that works, thank you

7

Try this:

awk '{printf s $3;s=FS}END{print ""}' file1 file2 file3 file4
8

awk '{printf s $3; s=F}END{print ""}' dom1of5.txt dom2of5.txt dom3of5.txt dom4of5.txt
awk: run time error: not enough arguments passed to printf("Oil[%]")
FILENAME="dom1of5.txt" FNR=1 NR=1
Oil[

---------- Post updated at 11:27 AM ---------- Previous update was at 11:19 AM ----------

awk '{printf s $3; s=FS}END{print ""}' dom1of5.txt dom2of5.txt dom3of5.txt dom4of5.txt
awk: run time error: not enough arguments passed to printf("Oil[%]")
FILENAME="dom1of5.txt" FNR=1 NR=1
Oil[

---------- Post updated at 11:27 AM ---------- Previous update was at 11:27 AM ----------

I'm not sure if I typed it correctly:
awk '{printf s $3; s=FS}END{print ""}' dom1of5.txt dom2of5.txt dom3of5.txt dom4of5.txt
awk: run time error: not enough arguments passed to printf("Oil[%]")
FILENAME="dom1of5.txt" FNR=1 NR=1
Oil[

9

Sorry, printf doesn't work like that with some awk versions, try this:

awk '{printf("%s%s", s, $3);s=FS}END{print ""}' dom1of5.txt dom2of5.txt dom3of5.txt dom4of5.txt
10

You should use FNR (not NR) to control multiple files.

awk '{a[FNR]=a[FNR] FS $2;t=(FNR>T)?FNR:t}END {for (i=1;i<=t;i++) print a}'  file1 file2 file3 file4
1 Like
11

Could you please elaborate the code, some where i missed the logic.:confused: